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Amazon's Gold Box Deal of the Day
Mike
P.S. Just kidding about the mouseover text (or am I...very sleepy...).
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
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Photo by Ken Straiton
Ctein met a number of TOP readers in Toronto on Wednesday. He hasn't said anything to me about it yet, but several readers have reported the meetup was a success.
Ken Straiton took this with with a Fuji X-Pro1 handheld at ISO 5000, with the 18mm lens.
Make it a point to visit Ken's website—I don't know him, but he's a heck of a shooter from the looks of things. Look for "Burma" under "Projects." That's the one that grabbed me.
Ken's Burma work reminds me of another photographer I've been meaning to mention—Aaron Greenman's "Holy Lands" portfolio. Like Ken's set it's a loose edit, but a lot of the shots are knockouts. Others are thought-provoking (at least to me—I'm reading a history of the Roman Empire right now and I've gotten to the part about the uprising in Judea).
And that brings to mind another photographer—remember all the way back to April 2007 (that's 40 years ago in digital camera years) when we did a post on a mysterious Flickr photographer known as "Glimpse of the World"? Glimpse turned out to be Howard French, a retired Senior Writer at The New York Times (and sometime TOP reader, to stay on topic) who now teaches both journalism and photography at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism. Well, Howard has a new book out, which the New York Review of Books wrote an article about. I'm a big fan of Howard's photography, which you can see more of here.
Maybe Ctein or some of the other participants will chime in here and tell us more about Wednesday? It's always fun when we can get like minds together.
Mike
(Thanks to Ken)
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
John Holland: "It was a great evening with Ctein in Toronto. Peter Bowers deserves a big thanks for arranging the venue.
"Ctein showed up with a big box full of 17x22 inkjets. Many of the prints involved photos or topics he's done recent TOP columns on, in particular What Does It Take To Be A Good Printer?, the $19.95 Micro 4/3 Print Offer, and When Good Profiles Turn Bad, about his troubles getting a good print of his Apollo/Soyuz photo.
"Ctein spent a good hour or so on his portfolio, going through each print and patiently answering many questions about technique, paper, printers, problems and solutions. Imagine being able to pick the brains of, say, Ansel Adams for an evening; that's what it felt like for me.
"To see the prints 'in the flesh' was revelatory. It is not possible to overstate how good they are, and how poorly an 800-pixel jpeg in a blog article represents some of their subtler characteristics.
"Finally, we allowed poor Ctein to eat, and after supper some of the other attendees pulled out some pictures. Peter Bowers showed some prints of his very beautiful B&W outdoor photography; his Flicker page gives you a good idea of how terrific a photographer he is.
"Then Ken Straiton casually produced a box of 8x10 B&W workprints of his street photos in Japan, shot on film with a 6x6 camera. These pictures are exquisite; I'd buy a book of 'em in a heartbeat. Ken's a pretty interesting character; he's lived in Japan for 26+ years and has created a substantial body of work.
"Ken and Ctein were nice enough to take the time to offer some suggestions for my own photos.
"Again, thanks to Peter, Ken and most of all Ctein for such a rare opportunity to see some first-rate prints and photography."
Ctein adds: What John said. Ken and Peter's photos were exquisite and that Costco book was fascinating (and well done). Had fun. So did Cally (my friend who came along). Thanks, Pete!
Peter Bowers: "When I saw Ken's photo of the evening I was immediately reminded of the first chapter of The Hobbit, where Gandalf shows a map to the dwarves. Of course Ctein is something of a modern day Wizard—he showed us some of his magic—we were treated to an intimate discourse on the art and science of printing. It was particularly interesting to hear the process and intent behind each image. Ctein himself is a charming and entertaining speaker. As the evening progressed and more people arrived I backed up to let others get in close, and that was when I met Ken Straiton. He pulled out a box of his B&W prints, and this was quite a revelation. I had never really seen quality B&W prints before, the delicate tonal gradations were just amazing, and they had a quality that I haven't seen in digital prints.
"If you ever get a chance to meet Ctein in person, take it—you won't be dissappointed!"
So day three of my five days with the D800E was kind of a bust. The weather was just plain blah, and I failed to find any portrait subjects before the light faded.
Then, at the Portrait Society opening, the Nikon and I fizzled.
Our friend John Camp was almost prescient when he wrote, in a response to the "Haptics" post:
As a D3 shooter, I never thought the D800 felt particularly big. I thought it was solid. Then today, for reasons I don't feel like explaining, but which I swear to God are totally legitimate, I went into a mall in Albuquerque and shot a photo of a bigger-than-lifesize photo of a Victoria's Secret model, dressed in diminutive underwear. (Apparently the poor girl can't afford full-sized underwear.) The camera felt like it was the size of a cannon; I felt like one of the world's leading perverts, just waiting for a mall cop to tap me on the shoulder and ask, "Exactly what are we doing here?" I took a half-dozen shots with the 85mm ƒ/1.8G, and fled. So, I'd like to suggest than in addition to the purely scientific measure of camera size, in ounces or grams, there is also a subjective size, which becomes larger under some circumstances.
I found out about that tonight. At the opening, my dragoon pistol turned into a blunderbuss. I felt like a showoff—conspicuous—and the focus-confirmation light kept zapping potential subjects like a laser cat. Now, I'm sure Thom Hogan knows the secret code to turn that bleedin' beacon off, but I don't, yet. I swear, one guy actually jumped when the light hit him. Another looked up like startled prey, saw me, and reared back like a spooked horse. And to be fair, I didn't have the heart for it tonight. Sometimes I just don't have the moxie to stick cameras in strangers' faces. I'm no Bruce Gilden. I work best when I have permission.
Continuing on my recent theme...this is the best picture I took tonight. I must be kind of a lonely guy; even I can see that this is a pretty lonely picture. I mean, jeez.
When I was taking this (ISO 1600, ƒ/3.2, 1/40th, handheld of course), a stranger came up to me on the street corner and said, "Are you really getting what you want there?" Clearly, he was dubious. We had an amicable little chat. Turned out he shoots with a Nikon F, of all things (youngish guy, too), and has been considering getting into digital.
Getting what I want, though? Hoo baby. Wish he could see this. In the original fullsized file, which is roughly two and a half times as wide as my 27" iMac screen, you can see a painting hanging on the wall inside the lighted window, and it's actually possible to discern that the bricks are sharper where I focused—near the lit window—than they are at the leading corner of the building. Even though it's still much more than adequately sharp there. Freakin' amazing.
If this isn't cheating, it probably ought to be.
Mike
P.S. I do admit that this would be sharper if I put the camera on a tripod and stopped down more. But for the size print I want to make, it will be plenty sharp.
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Kwasi: "The option to turn off the AF assist has been mentioned. I would add that there's not much loss in turning it off—the D800 will accurately focus in not much more than moonlight, provided there's some texture/contrast in the subject :) .
"And I completely agree on the 'contextual size' thing—it does provoke much more of a reaction than a little compact does—which is why I'm happy to see the likes of the RX1 being brought to market. That said, a lot of that comes from the photographer as well. I've noticed that going from smaller to bigger I feel more conspicuous for a while before returning to my default level, and the converse for going from bigger to smaller. Irrational, but funny."
Steve Jacob: "It is a phenomenon that deserves a column of its own. Why is it when I point my X-pro1/60mm lens at people they smile or happily ignore me but when I did the same with a D700/85mm they scowl or duck? The X-pro1 is not a small camera but it just isn't intimidating. Should we call this the paparazzi effect? Is there something about a large DSLR in the hands of a middle aged man that has unwanted associations with intrusiveness or voyeurism? Or is it simply that the size and styling of the beast that creates a separation between photographer and subject?"
Mike replies: It also has to do with putting a camera up to your face, as opposed to looking down at it (or looking at the LCD). The OM-D would have been a much better tool for me last night—small and paltry-looking, and I would have flipped the viewing screen upward and used it mini-Rollei style. I'll bet I could have taken pics to my heart's content without bothering a soul, including me. But hey, when you have a limited time to try a new camera you do have to force things a bit.
MJFerron: "It's a tradeoff Mike. You feel like a show-off or you can go the other route and feel like a low-level weenie using a baby Micro 4/3 camera. :-) Take your pick!"
First, get a load of this: Thom Hogan reports that although the Nikon Contest 2012-13 is now open, users of the only premium film SLR still being marketed, the Nikon F6, aren't invited.
Oh, perfidy! Film is officially the poor stepchild now, I guess. Before it was just de facto.
An awesome (overused term used advisedly) lens
Apropos of stepchildren, I suspect 35mm might be the poor stepchild focal length of Nikon's recently refurbished ƒ/1.8 line of FX primes, too. They'll probably jump right to the other short teles and get to 35mm, the perennially neglected focal length clad in rags and cowering in the corner, late if ever.
If there was a 35mm ƒ/1.8G lens for FX, I would have rented that one.
That's not sour grapes, exactly: the 35mm ƒ/1.4G is an awesome lens (hush, you lot of reproving pommies: I'm a proud American and I said awesome and I do mean awesome) optically, truly wonderful. I'm loving (and approving of) Nikon's designers' choices.
Examples? No shots for you! I checked the lens out with test shots taken around the house and the yard, and boy are those dull. The mess does look better the more bokeh there is, I'll say that.
As with all lenses, I suggest people evaluating shots taken with this lens stop scrutinizing photos anxiously for one pet quality or another and take in the overall gestalt of the lens's look instead. Its image quality is quite wonderful. Might even be the best Nikkor I've ever used, although the 24–70mm ƒ/2.8G should probably be mentioned in the same breath.
But it's imposing in size, weight, and especially price: currently $1,619 at B&H. That's really stiff for a single focal length, even of this quality. I'm struggling to convince myself that it makes sense for a low-lens-count shooter like myself (my ideal SLR lens complement is two, a 35mm and an 85mm, which I use in about an 80/20 proportion respectively), but for someone who wants a wider selection of lenses, especially someone who doesn't shoot with a 35mm a lot, it would be that much more difficult to justify.
If you shoot 50mm, no-brainer: although it is navigating the peepers' gauntlets with some difficulty, the new 50mm ƒ/1.8G is an objective with a great overall gestalt. Go for it. It would be perfection on the D600, D800, or D800E.
I suspect the old AF Nikkor 35mm ƒ/2D would do fine on this camera too, at least for my purposes. That's a lens that I know thoroughly—I reviewed it when it came out and I think I've owned five of them over the years, including one during the "oil on the aperture blades" period, and there's certainly nothing wrong with it. It's not get-outta-town beautiful like this new one, though. I especially love the ƒ/1.4G's performance wide open and one and two stops down; the transition to o-o-f is gentle but the lens is so sharp that a little blur makes the in-focus objects pop. But naturally. And the in-focus areas are subtly smooth-sharp, not harsh-sharp. It's a really pretty look. A lens to fall for. Or maybe that's just me.
And I've yet to find a weakness with it. Still looking. No VR? Okay, if you like.
The D800E and I are going to an opening tonight, so we get yet more low-light testing, this time with an emphasis on focusing. The light/weather today in Waukesha could not possibly be less appealing. As drab as can be. (Cue Muttley snigger from Universe.)
In the hand
I'll steal Erwin Puts's word, haptics, to talk about the D800E's ergonomics.
To begin with, there's big and there's big. It sorta depends on what you're used to. If you're accustomed to any of the Canikons with vertical grips, the 1Ds/D3x style cameras, then the D800E is going to seem rather light, even just a touch cramped. Coming from the other direction—from Micro 4/3 or a digicam or a rangefinder—it's a bit of a handful.
Similarly with the lens. Most people today are used to zooms, and if you're used to anything but the cheapest kit-type zooms, a 20 oz./600g lens that sticks out from the camera 3.5 inches/~9cm and takes 67mm filters isn't going to seem burdensome. You're probably accustomed to worse.
But if you're coming from (say) the World's Most Perfect Lens, the Lumix 20mm ƒ/1.7 for Micro 4/3 (3.5 oz., 1.8" long, and 46mm filters), then it seems like Bigfoot up against Natalie Portman. To plunk you into my somewhat weird world, the Nikkor is bigger than my medium-format lens, which admittedly is just a normal (80mm for 6x6cm); a moderate-wide 60mm would be bigger. (Sorry for the crappy product shot. One thing perpetually on the to-do list is to set up a tabletop for product shots. Not hard. And not done.)
Curiously, I think it's only because I've been shooting with a 6000-series Rollei for the past year or so that the Nikon seems so nice and handy. Had that monster not acclimated me to biggish and not-so-wieldy hand cameras, I might have a different take on the D800E.
As it is, the D800E seems mighty comfortable. I'm not overly familiar with Nikons—the last two I used were the D3 and the D700 back when they were newish (thanks, John C. and David N.), yet the D800E feels familiar and the controls are more or less where I expect to find them. Haven't cracked the manual or Thom Hogan's Guide yet, although no doubt I'll learn a lot more when I do. Individual photographers might have one or another pet peeve about this or that control, but I doubt there's much that won't seem like second nature soon enough. Stumbling around in the dark the other night, "I" (i.e. my conscious mind) didn't remember where the top LCD light was, but my finger did. (It's on the shutter-button collar with the on-off switch.)
The grip is long enough for all my fingers, just; you can do that thing where you hang the camera off your right-hand fingertips as you muck around with cards; the card bay is easy to access (unlike the A900, which stupidly mounts CF cards with the ridge on the wrong side. Fumblefingers me has cursed that many a time). One habit I picked up shooting Leicas—I think originating, for me, with Tom Abrahamsson; if I'm remembering that right, thanks, Tom—is to hit the shutter button not with your fingertip but with the palm side of the first knuckle on your index finger—it's easier to squeeze rather than jab the shutter button that way. Anyway the Nikon's shutter release position allows me enough room to do that.
The camera doesn't seem heavy. It's a decidedly middleweight 35+ oz./1 kg, but that's offset by the volume or bulk of the camera, and it doesn't "read" heavy to the hand. The lens is another matter; it feels like a glass paperweight, no question, and it makes the combo feel heavyish. Again, depends on what you're used to. I've always been suspicious of the conventional phrase "the lens balances well on the camera," but, if any combo will illustrate that concept, this one does. It just seems like the camera and lens has the right heft and weight to be stable as can be as you shoot.
Altogether it's a very appealing, businesslike but operator-friendly feel. Despite that, it has little "object quality." It reminds me of my RAV4: smooth and capable, decent looking if you're down with the look, quite well put together, but few pretenses. The D800E is solidly in the black polycarbonate blob school of haptics that Nikon's been rockin' with for a coon's age now.
Oh, I forgot...
...The perfect prime match for the camera is the new AF-S Nikkor 28mm ƒ/1.8G, I should mention. Saw that one at Milwaukee's best camera store, Mike Crivello's, the other day. Didn't think of it earlier. Kind of a sleeper lens that some shooters I know of are quietly loving. How much would you have to crop to get down to the 35mm angle of view? Down to 32 or 33 MP, maybe? What a hardship. Much more palatable cost, too.
Anyway, the D800E feels very smooth and capable, nicely ergonomic, and just comfortable as can be to shoot with; a real enthusiast's camera. But with the heavy 35mm (or, for most peoples' mileage, any respectable zoom) it's a camera you shoot with both hands. However comfortable your left hand feels under the lens, you do need to use it.
As soon as my progeny stumbles awake, I'm going to try to press him and some of his friends into service to pose for some portraits; I expect to encounter reluctance, if not outright resistance. Stay tuned.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Nikhil Ramkarran: "I've had the D800E, this 35mm and a few other bits of Nikon kit in my Amazon cart for a couple months now itching to pull the trigger. Been grinning like a fool since you decided to test this combo (and yes, I will remember to go through your links if my benefactor ever gets around to giving me the thumbs up)."
Mike replies: Not to be selfish, but be sure you take it out of your cart and re-select it before you actually do the inevitable, or we won't get credit for it...we don't get credit for anything you buy that's already in your cart, ever, even if you put it there during a session that originated from TOP. Only things that you both select and also buy during a visit directly from TOP get counted in our column. And it really does help, so many thanks [/business mode].
Aaron: "I've been really enjoying the Nikon 28mm ƒ/1.8. I got it a few months back and am using it on my D700. Paired with my 105mm (and/or 50mm, sometimes), it's been great. Just a little wider and a little longer than your 35/85mm combo. Very nice rendering—I really like the transitions between in- and out-of-focus areas. I really like the look of photos at 28mm and ƒ/1.8: there's enough in focus to be an interesting photo and the backgrounds out of focus enough to recede a bit, at middle focus distances."
Tom Kwas: "Plus one for the 35mm/85mm reality. I look back on years of professional photography, and that's what I've used even extrapolated to 120, 4x5 and 8x10. Since I shoot APS-C, what I need is a 24mm ƒ/2 (or ƒ/2.8), and a 55mm ƒ/2 (or 60mm ƒ/2 or ƒ/2.8)...since Nikon makes a killer 'G' series 60mm for a decent price, all I need is the 24mm in the 500 dollar range...where is it? Where is it?"
Mike replies: I know. I kept asking the same question, only with Pentax. They also make a killer 55mm for APS-C.
CMS: "In full agreement with your assessment of the 35mm ƒ/1.4G, which is my most-used lens on the D700 for one and a half years now. I bought it when getting tired of waiting for a 35mm ƒ/2 AF-S. Unfortunately the current 35mm ƒ/2 isn't up to the task, as the corners get soft when used wider than ƒ/8. As if that wasn't enough, both my AF and AF-D samples are affected by the oil on the aperture blades problem."
I did get out for quite a while with the D800E today. Main task: carry it around town with one hand for a while, see how it feels. (At this point I'm evaluating this camera and lens for purchase, not "testing" it in any objective sense. When I'm photographing, I tend to walk with the camera hanging from my right hand—a holdover from a long-ago medium-format SLR that didn't accept a camera strap.) Verdict: comfortable enough. But I'd get a wrist strap.
As promised, here's the Virgin Mary statue picture (this is at St. Mary's Catholic Church in Waukesha, by the way) with more ambient daylight, taken about half an hour after sundown (ISO 1600, handheld). I don't see how including the telephone poles adds anything to the picture.
This color record shot shows you approximately how dark it seemed subjectively when I took the first picture—still a little light in the sky. (Click on any of these to see them somewhat larger.) But just for fun, check this out:
That's a screenshot of the telephone wires in the background to the right of Mary's head—the white rectangle from the JPEG above. If you click on this you should see it 200%, which is really larger than you need to pixel-peep if you're printing (100% is plenty). No noise reduction of course, and bear in mind those wires aren't even entirely in focus.
I don't know about you, but this is plenty of detail for me, after shooting 35mm Tri-X for twenty years.
And look at this. This is a frame straight out of the camera, at I think ISO 2500, a screenshot again:
And just look at all the shadow detail that's in the same frame when I crank the sliders:
Yowzuh. That'll set ya free.
This is about as good as I can do from tonight's shooting, and I don't like it better than the original shot from yesterday. Sometimes you have to see in order to tell, though. (And a disclaimer: there's some Photoshop compositing in this, to get rid of some stray light sources, as you can see in the two frame grabs above it. No £10,000 for me.)
I do not get good pictures wandering around town, but this must be the King of Stumps. Somehow I've got to find out what the story is behind this tree-that-was...this bad boy is twenty feet tall.
The amount of detail you get seems almost a little...intoxicating. Or whatever the photo-geeky equivalent of "intoxicating" is.
I might actually like this. There are all kinds of delicate things going on in the big version; might depend how much detail shows up in a print. I'd have to put it on the board for four or five days to sort out how I feel about it.
Again, seems like plenty of detail for me, at ISO 1600. (And again, do I really need a tripod here?) Although it could take a bit of noise reduction, depending on what showed up in a print—the files have a slightly gritty look from way in close (although I haven't even shot the camera below ISO 800 yet!). Bear in mind that noise relates to size; this detail is only ~600 px wide, so the whole file is twelve times as wide as you're seeing this. (I should do a comparison of the A900 vs. the D800E, shouldn't I? Don't hold your breath...that's not the sort of thing that interests me very much. And making sure such a comparison is rigorous, as Ctein will attest, is too much like work.)
Here (above) is the same detail converted in Nikon NX2, saved as a TIFF, then opened in Photoshop and converted to grayscale. Seems to have none of that grittiness—less noise—but not as much sharpness; as the ACR conversion could use a little noise reduction, this could use a little unsharp mask. Looks better to me, though.
Did I mention the weather cleared up? Anyway, here on Day Two, the Big Dragoon and I are getting on quite well.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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I just realized something amusing. The second picture in my "Big Dragoon" post, below, might have been too small for you to read—especially if you didn't click on it and look at the 800-pixel-wide version (the largest the blogging software allows).
When you see something "as figure" or "as figuration," you see a shape that isn't there, or a positive as a negative, or an illusion of some sort, as when you see a vase in the well known "two faces or a vase" illusion. M.C. Escher made a career of this.
It's possible to see my statue picture too much as figure, so that the strong white thumblike or torpedo-like shape at the top dominates the brain (you might want to squint as you look at this):
So perhaps it might help you to see what I see when I look at the small JPEG, based on what my brain knows was there and what is obvious in larger, more detailed versions:
Danny Lyon, The Walls, 1967
By Jim Hughes
I first met Danny Lyon in 1968 at a sprawling Museum of Modern Art exhibit of Henri Cartier-Bresson’s work. A mutual friend introduced us. I was relatively new on the scene, a young photo magazine editor, and Danny was an up-and-coming star at Magnum. His resumé already included The Bikeriders* and The Destruction of Lower Manhattan. I remember a huge mane of curly hair with the texture of steel wool, and cowboy boots that clicked on the MoMA Sculpture Garden's tile.
As he turned on a heel and clicked away, Danny Scowled, "I have no use for camera magazine editors."
Nonetheless, and despite the attitude, it would not be long before I began publishing Danny's powerful photographs. One essay in particular, "Life Inside," a 14-page black-and-white documentation of Texas prisons taken mostly from the prisoners' perspective, proved particularly revealing. Conversations With the Dead was the book that resulted from the project. I assigned Dan McCoy, a Black Star photographer who had been writing a column for Camera 35, the magazine I was editing at the time, to conduct an in-depth interview to accompany the essay in America: Photographic Statements, a new kind of U. S. Camera Annual that I was putting together. It would include a portfolio from Eva Rubinstein, the first published essay by a young Jodi Cobb, who went on to be a staff photographer at the National Geographic, Jill Freedman’s "Circus" pictures, Bill Owens' Suburbia
For his interview with Lyon, McCoy was to meet Danny at an undisclosed location in the Southwest. But when he called as instructed for directions, McCoy was told there would be no interview. Danny suggested he would interview himself and mail it in.
After all, he pointed out, he had recently declined to be interviewed by The New York Times. McCoy, who had just been inside the Utah State Penitentiary for eight days photographing for the movie version of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, understood that Lyon was (and is) unique among working photographers. "He is a loner who guards his private life and its location with missionary zeal," McCoy noted.
"You are asking for a freedom in your answers that you are unwilling to give the interviewer in his questions," McCoy suggested to Lyon that day. "What kind of interview is it when the person interviewed determines both the questions and the answers?"
After a good deal of back-and-forthing, a compromise was reached. McCoy could conduct the interview then and there. The published result was appropriately titled, "Conversations From a Phone Booth on Route 66..."
Evidently, Danny Lyon liked our layout, approved of the concept for the Annual as a whole, and didn’t hate the interview. Over the years, we became friends. At one point, I even published a set of his black and whites whose borders he had hand-colored in magic marker. Well I remember the day in 1983 when we were to meet at our office to select a retrospective portfolio for Camera Arts, and I came out to find him lounging on the couch in our waiting room, launching perfectly folded paper airplanes at our long-suffering receptionist!
When Camera Arts was unceremoniously killed in a kind of corporate coup de grâce a couple of months later, Danny surprised me by writing an elegy for Aperture: "Jim Hughes, who…brought Camera Arts to its preeminent position among the popular photography magazines, has lost magazines the way a good cavalry officer loses horses in battle. Shortly after he published W. Eugene Smith’s essay 'Minamata' in Camera 35 in 1974, that magazine was sold (out from under him) by its owner, the American Express Company.
"We have lost our democracy, mostly through lack of courage. That was ultimately Camera Arts' finest quality, and its fatal flaw. In a world that nourishes mediocrity, it tried to be bold…. In this sad time, with our powers usurped, aesthetic success guarantees failure."
Or, as a friend cryptically noted upon learning of my magazine's death, "Sh*t rises!"
Kirk Decker kindly wrote in a comment to my recent piece on Ralph Steiner: "I still have the entire Camera Arts run. It was a great photography magazine, and I was crushed when it was over."
So was I, Kirk, so was I. Come next June, thirty years will have passed since that sad time, and I can honestly say I still haven't fully recovered. I suspect that was the point at which I began to understand, or at least recognize, my own reclusive impulse: the need to stay within oneself in order to see beyond more clearly.
Jim
[*I really hope you bought this when I told you to—take a look at the current price
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Neil Swanson: "I also have every issue of Camera Arts. Dog eared they are. Wore them out. Nothing since has been as good. I was turned on to many many people I still admire. I also own The Bikeriders, and Suburbia ( signed by Bill at a Fred Picker workshop). I have an old original copy of Eugene Richards' Dorchester Days. I mailed him cash; a brown envelope came with a signed book. Decades later I heard him speak at a VII Seminar. He signed it again, much to our mutual surprise. He hadn't seen a copy of the book in ages."
'Kay, first of all, I think I mentioned the Universe is mocking me for my attempt at camera rental. Today is one of my five days with the D800E, but though the Big Dawg departed the UPS depot at 4:28 a.m., it made its way to the doorstep of TOP World HQ at exactly darkfall. About fifteen minutes after sunset to be exact. Which means I will have to wait till tomorrow to show you just how wretchedly unphotogenic the weather is.
Meanwhile, I couldn't resist, so I dragged it out into the inky dark. I'm just playin' at this point, but I will say that I have no idea where this notion came from that you must use the D800E with a tripod. Balderdash and hoo-ha. I suppose if you're trying to absolutely max out resolution, but the darn thing has resolution to burn, so why not just relax and let it do its thing and be happy? If there's one thing this camera does not need, it is help resolving things.
Anyway I took both these snaps handheld, whilst stumbling blindly about and barking my shins on things I could not see, and, while you cannot tell from these tiny JPEGs, the originals are sharp down to the pixel level as far as I can tell. And I had Photoshop cranked up to 400%, which is ridiculous. The second shot was intended as a torture test, but the big dragoon simply swatted my paltry challenge aside with a flick of its mighty mirror and a flexing of its stupendous sensor. There is detail in the highlights, there is detail in the shadows, and I am scorned. The D800E is mighty, mighty; the darkness itself trembles before it.
More anon.
Mike
ADDENDUM: To answer some of the many questions in the comments: Let me run through my five days with the camera before I pronounce my opinions about various usability issues. I promise I'll do at least one more post about the D800E (probably more) and I'll give my overall impressions then. —MJ.
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:
Oskar Ojala: "The amount of shadow detail this camera can hold is insane...very practical for many photographic situations, though."
Paul McCann: "You're taking photos with a soldier?"
Mike replies: I certainly am.
("Dragoon" can also refer to a large pistol with a healthy kick sold before the Civil War by Colt. I used to own a very faithful non-working replica Colt Dragoon, and I'll be darned if I can remember what happened to it.)
paugie: "How much was it again? Oh, goody! Can't afford it. Down, wallet, down. Sit, stay!"
James Symington: "Balderdash and hoo-ha? Use it more and repent. Nobody is saying you have to use a tripod but if you are happy with slightly—or even very—unsharp pictures you don't generally need them to be 36mp. The beauty of the D800E comes when you nail the focus and all that detail jumps out. This is harder than you might imagine."
Mike replies: I do take your point, and you're right, but then, that's true of any good camera. I went through all of this with John B. Williams' book Image clarity and a 55mm Nikkor and Tech Pan film, as well as a tripod I'm still glad I don't have to lug around any more. I should mention again that I'm personally not primarily interested in this camera's resolution capability at high magnifications on the computer screen. (Which absolutely doesn't imply any criticism of those who are.)
John Nollendorfs: "The beauty of the D800 is that you can just crank the ISO up and shoot to you heart's content. Yep, lower ISO images could look slightly better, but sometimes the higher ISO allows you to get shots that you couldn't do on a tripod, even if you are not lazy. I have no problem shooting at 800 or 1600 and still have very good IQ. The shadow detail this camera can capture with no noise is phenomenal even at the higher ISO's."
Will: "That top shot is an amazing example of shadow detail and separation. I'd love to see a carefully-printed print from Digital Silver Imaging of that one!"
John Brewton: "Couldn't agree more, Mike. I use my D800 handheld all the time. I've managed one at 1/8 sec., something I never could do even with my Leicas. I think it has terrific balance with a decent prime."
Brent Parkin: "Been shooting one now for over a month and the shadow detail and highlight recovery is awesome. I don't think this camera will go down in my history as a favorite tool (too small and slightly akward controls compared to my D3). But its images are among the most beautiful I have made since digital came along. Enjoy your time with it!!"
Steve Jacob: "For those considering remortgaging the house or selling the pedigree cat to get one of these, the D600 is quite a bit cheaper and as far as I can tell, equally awesome."
Dexter Gordon by Herman Leonard
If anybody out there loves classic jazz (there went 93% of you) and still listens to vinyl (there went 87% of those remaining), check out popmarket.com sometime within the next sixteen hours and nine minutes.
(I need Ctein to tell me what 13% of 7% is. On the good side, at least I'm not an elector in Miami-Dade.)
Mike
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
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Featured Comments from:
Jeff: "I've spent many nights looking at jazz photo books while listening to various Blue Note vinyl and re-issues, mono and stereo, with a nice glass of wine. Almost as good as being in a live club. Ah, so nic(h)e."
Russell: "Hey! I qualify as one of the 1% (13% of 7%)! That is a great set of recordings. Now I still have the question to answer that has plagued me for the past 45 years or so...do I spend my hard earned cash on vinyl or more Tri-X?"
Mike replies: What is that, a Zen koan? [g]
Rob: "Oooh, I actually saw a large print of the Dexter Gordon photo in the Andrew Smith Gallery in Santa Fe not too long ago. I immediately fell in love with it but did not purchase it, because I was in a frugal state of mind. But damn, it's a great image."
Bob Rosinsky: "I saw an exhibit of Herman Leonard photographs at our little art museum in Lakeland, Fla. The photos were stunning. He photographed all of the straight-ahead jazz greats using strobes in the '40s and '50s. The generators/packs probably weighed at least forty pounds. The prints at the exhibition were scanned from the original negatives, enhanced in Photoshop, printed onto transparency film with an Epson, and then the big Epson films were used to make stupendous contact prints on traditional silver gelatin paper.
"I got to meet him. He struck me as being a modest and genuinely nice person. He told me that Miles Davis always gave him access to photograph him. Herman said that there was no way a good photographer could take a bad picture of Miles.
"Final note: he apprenticed under Yousuf Karsh."
By Ctein
Some chance remarks in Mike's "Incidentally..." post reminded me that I had been meaning to write about books of photographs that I considered important moments in the field (what Mike called touchstones), and why.
Now, understand that these books may not appear impressive by today's standards. I would say that we live in a golden age of photographic reproduction, except that I think it's only going to continue to get better. A touchstone, though, doesn't have to stand up well today. It's a marker, a highlight. The Wright Brothers flight will always be a touchstone of aviation, although it's utterly unimpressive today, technically. I will close with a book that I consider the current pinnacle as well as a touchstone, but most of my touchstones date back to the 1960s and '70s.
First on my list is Gentle Wilderness: The Sierra Nevada, text by John Muir, photographs by Richard Kauffman (1967). Mike favors Eliot Porter, but a case could be made for any of the Sierra Club-Ballantine books of that period. Me, I'll vote for this one, because it's the book that drew me into the series primarily through its utterly luminous blue cover photograph of the Center Basin. I'd never before seen a reproduction with that kind of step-through-the-page clarity, and I rarely have since. It doesn't hurt that the book was printed by Kauffman's own company, H.S. Crocker. (I should do a column about Richard, one of photography's greatest under-appreciated amateurs.)
The entire series is a touchstone. Art reproduction books typically were expensive and good or cheap and, well, cheap. Ian and Betty Ballantine felt that they could make money on affordably-priced, high-quality art books. Even as a college student, I was able to buy the majority of the trade paperback editions of the Sierra Club–Ballantine series. The series was a commercial success that opened the doors to the thousands of good photography books we've had since.
And, yes, by today's standards the reproduction is only adequate. At the time it was a level of quality that had been hitherto unaffordable by mere mortals.
My next touchstone goes to the other extreme: Himalayas by Yoshikazu Shirakawa (1971). The deluxe wraparound slip-covered edition tips the scales at 12 pounds, filled with sumptuous reproductions, full-side, double-side, and even quadruple-side, that positively drip ink. An amazing tonal range and color gamut for the time, and it sold for an amazing price. I can't remember what; I think traumatic amnesia has blotted out the number, but it was the most expensive photography book offered up for general sale in the U.S. I bought a copy because I was fresh out of college and had a great-paying job. I'm still amazed that I did. There are many ways that today's books have better reproduction, but this one just screams "rich," and in a good way.
Ernst Haas, Tobago (from The Creation)
My third touchstone is Ernst Haas' The Creation (the original 1971 hardcover edition, of course). Much more affordable than Himalayas, although it was not inexpensive, and not quite as sumptuous in its reproduction, but it was designed (and succeeded eminently well) to make you fall in love with color. It's a positively lyric book filled with lyric reproductions. I got my copy as a gift, and, sadly, it sustained water damage a few years later. Because I was something of an idiot at the time, I didn't replace it while the book was still in print. I've never seen the 1983 reissue, which seems to be available on Amazon for not too much money. Does anyone know how it compares in quality to the original? [Not very well. Hold out for the original. —MJ]
Lest readers think I pay no attention to black-and-white books, my fourth touchstone is a landmark that ushered in a new era of fine photographic reproduction. I'm talking Ansel Adams. Not the 1974 opus, Images 1923–1974. No, I'm thinking five years later, with the publication of Yosemite and the Range of Light. It's not as superficially impressive as the 1974 volume, until you open the covers and compare reproductions between the two. It's like night and day—the 1979 book has open, luminous tones and lovely shadow and highlight separation that comes immensely closer to conveying the feel of original Adams prints than anything previously done. The reproductions are also sharper and more exquisitely detailed. Put the two volumes side-by-side and there is simply no comparison.
What changed? The advent of electronically-controlled laser platemaking. It revolutionized press work and every subsequent photography book that had pretensions to seriosity had to stand against Yosemite and the Range of Light.
Up till now
Lest any readers conclude that I am hopelessly mired in books of the past, I'll close with two modern works, one of which I'm pretty sure will be a touchstone and the other of which I'm certain about. First, Bruce Davison's three-volume masterwork, Outside Inside
Finally, a touchstone that is currently at the pinnacle of color reproduction: Bill Atkinson's Within the Stone (2004). I reviewed this five years ago here. Amazingly, Bill still has copies of this book for sale, although it is out of stock with Amazon. I just ordered three copies; I will have no trouble finding people to give them to as gifts over the holiday season. Read my original review to understand why this is such an amazing book. Everything I said then still stands; nothing else I've seen comes remotely close to this volume for color reproduction, and the price of $40 makes it eminently affordable.
• • •
Those are some of my touchstones, certainly the ones that have stayed in my memory the best and the longest. Let's hear about some of yours!
Ctein
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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Featured Comments from:
Thomas Osbourne: "Oh my...I happen to own two of these books, Yosemite and the Range of Light and Within the Stone. I bought the Atkinson book after seeing an exhibit of Atkinson's photographs. Seeing the exhibit was like discovering cave paintings—pure visual poetry. The book is more of the same, but the images are perfectly paired with luminous passages of poetry and prose."
Nigel: "The Atkinson appears to be in stock with Amazon—in the U.K
Charles Cramer: "Ctein, I consider Gentle Wilderness to be one of the great photography books. Kauffman's photographs are absolutely luminous. I would love to read a column by you about him."
The Sony NEX-6 begins shipping mid-week, according to B&H's website. I think this is going to be a killer camera, a less expensive and more modestly balanced version of the excellent and appealing NEX-7, but with the advantages of the lessons Sony's learned from its big brother—trickle-down technology at its most promising. I love the way the bigger NEX handles. Can't tell for sure until they're out, but I wouldn't be suprised at all if this one vaults to the very top of the list of recommendable small cameras—and that would be saying something, these days.
The small-sensor true-pocket-camera niche has been torrid for several years now, with the outstanding Canon series culminating in the current S110 leading the way, closely followed by the third-gen Panasonic, the LX7, with its Leica lens and addictive IQ. The Olympus XZ-1 wasn't as popular (possibly because it overlapped with Olympus's notorious corporate troubles?), but people who used it thought it was just as good. Olympus has moved the next-gen XZ-2 upscale a bit, without leaving the pocketable niche. No word as to when this is due; it was originally scheduled to begin shipping yesterday.
Another trickle-down model that might even improve on some ways (diopter correction, for one) on its older big brother, the Fuji E-X1 is another camera whose arrival is imminent (Nov. 10th) and intensely anticipated. Alas, the little brother lacks the signature switchable EVF/OVF of the wonderful X-Pro1, but it's complete as an alternative to the NEX-6. People love the good looks of the Fuji X cameras, but it's not just skin deep—the control layout is also among the best. Surely the E-X1, available in both silver and black, is even better looking than the other handsome recent Fujis.
Also due to ship imminently is Olympus's Pen Lite, the E-PL5, the higher-spec'd of the two pen cameras. Not only does it sport the sensor and processor from the OM-D E-M5, but it's rumored to be the only Micro 4/3 camera with no low-pass (anti-aliasing) filter. That's making heads turn.
Mentioned here just yesterday, the new Canon EF 35mm ƒ/2 IS USM joins its image-stabilized 24mm and 28mm brethren. Targeted mainly toward video users, there's a cadre of still shooters who will also like these options. It's true that the days of high value "mass market" basic primes are gone—these are high-priced lenses—but the counterbalancing advantage is that the lenses can now be made to a higher standard; cost cutting is no longer so important for market success.
Also newly available for pre-order is the 24–70mm ƒ/4 IS USM zoom. Although intended as the "kit lens" (if you can call such premium equipment "kits") for the new EOS 6D, the new lens will also likely be an excellent all-rounder for any of the 5D series cameras as well.
The forthcoming Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm ƒ/4G ED VR telephoto zoom is also a useful utilitarian lens for many full-frame shooters. According to assurances it will be a very high-quality lens, but with a useful balance of size, price, weight and maximum aperture for many shooters to whom the ƒ/2.8 pro version is overkill.
The Canon 6D is also available for pre-order. Although it's not due until a little more than a month from now, it should ship in time for Christmas. The sleek and elegant 6D just reeks of design that's been evolved and refined over multiple generations. A less expensive offering to replace the outgoing 5D Mark II, the 6D will counterbalance the rising price of the 5D series cameras for full-frame shooters. Another thing this implies is that, like many of the other cameras in this post, it will be a sensible "trickle-down" model incoporating many of the lessons learned from its more cutting-edge siblings.
Probably the quirkiest product here, the diminutive Sony RX1 is also the furthest off on the horizon, not being due to ship until mid-December. You can get in line now by pre-ordering, which might be wise if you want one—while we can't imagine these will sell by the bushel (the price is high), supply will probably also be severely limited at first. The full-frame Rx1 is tiny, but will have a premium captive lens and a very high pixel count. It will be unique in the marketplace when it gets here, and thus not easy to place in context. It looks suspiciously like a labor of love on the part of somebody in power at Sony.
We love "thinking different," however. The more variety in the marketplace, the more photographers who will be well served by something. And that's a good thing.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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Featured Comments from:
Stephen F Faust: "I think Sony really misjudged their target audience with the RX1 by not including an integrated viewfinder—even an electronic one would have put it on my lust list and probably got me to dump my Fuji X100 just in time for Christmas. Otherwise it hits ALL the right marks for me—full frame sensor, fast, high-quality 35mm lens, compact chassis. But no viewfinder = no sale. Guess I'll stick with my well-loved X100 and save myself $2800. Maybe next time, Sony."
Mike replies: There I have to disagree with you, and pretty strongly. Surely offering the choice of the FDA-V1K optical viewfinder and the FDA-EV1MK electronic viewfinder—and the ability to either choose which one you prefer or interchange them—was an "integral" part of the design brief of the camera from the very start. I've used Zeiss optical add-on viewfinders, and they are really glorious. Also probably really pricey, because they are essentially little lenses. I wouldn't be surprised if the FDA-V1K cost $500 all by itself.
JonA: "Boy it sure is good I don't have money to spend with all these great cameras and lenses out there. On the other hand, I like things simple and there is just way too much choice out there. A glut of options but so many how would you pick one?"
Bambang Indrayoto: "The beauty of RX-1 is that I do not need to buy a single lens...."
I help people shop for cameras for a living, and I'm quite good at it if I do say so myself, yet when I find myself shopping for cameras myself I find it exhausting...almost distressing, even. I wonder if other people feel the same way.
When I groused yesterday that the weather would probably be bad for my five-day window with the rental D800E, a number of people jumped eagerly in to admonish me that "bad weather makes good pictures," in the words of Sam Abell's dad.
To which my grumpy response is, yeah, sometimes. Crappy featureless gray days with crappy light don't make good pictures.
And of course this morning I got the notice that the D800E has shipped and in en route to TOP World Headquarters—and it's a crappy featureless gray day with crappy light. Figures. Now I have to start hoping anxiously that the weather changes.
Even worse: just when I had decided on Mario and Zombies, something happens to make Final Fantasy and Japanese imports look that much better. In other words, no sooner do I settle my mind on Nikon for a big, full-size, full-frame camera, than this happens...
...Oren sends me a link to a rumor report of a forthcoming image-stabilized EF 35mm ƒ/2 lens.
This won't be exciting for most people. But all of us, or most of us, have "mainstay lenses," the lens we do most of our work with, the lens that suits the way we see. Oren put it succinctly when he said "for my taste, it will be the most important lens introduction of the year." Dammit. For my taste too.
The waters grow cloudier. My grumpiness level rises. I even have a Canon film camera, that I could use this lens on too.
I shall keep you posted. Unless of course my head explodes first.
Mike
(Thanks to Oren Grad)
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
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Featured Comments from:
Murray: "Let's see if your excitement lasts beyond the release of Canon's pricing."
David Byrne's disqualified winning image
The winner of the U.K. "Landscape Photographer of the Year" competition has been disqualified for using "too much Photoshopping" on his winning image, The Telegraph reports.
David Byrne (no points off for using a famous name) was stripped of his first-place prize and, more painfully, of the £10,000 winner's check, or cheque.
Contest organizers found that there was "no deliberate intention to deceive the judges," but that "the level of manipulation means that this photograph gained an unfair advantage." The Photoshopping was said to affect the integrity of the competition.
(Has Photoshopping in photography competitions gotten to be like doping in the sport of cycling, I wonder?)
Mike
(Thanks to Jay Townsend and several other)
UPDATE From Tim Parkin: "It was myself and a colleague, Alex Nail, who looked into this last week and found the four entered images were composited in various ways. One of the images was in a category that allowed compositing but the others weren't and hence were not eligible. The details can be found at the following links:
http://www.timparkin.co.uk/2012/10/landscape-photographer-of-the-year-2/
http://www.alexnail.com/blog/news-updates/lpoty-2012/
"Both of us have no issue with the idea of composites (even if we both would prefer to see great non-composited images) so this was a purely quasi-legal issue, not a moral one."
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
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Featured Comments from:
Slobodan Blagojevic: "[The disqualification] was not because of Photoshopping in itself, but because of compositing (i.e., adding or removing elements) in a category where compositing was specifically not allowed."
Peter Nilsson: "Pure irony for a competition characterised almost entirely by excessive manipulation (view any set of past winners if you have the stomach)."
"The unusual wins out over the usual."
-
Mike
(Thanks to Simon Griffee)
NOTE: ...that Sam's book, below, in the footer, which sold well for us when it was new, is available temporarily at a bargain remainder price. The book got mixed reviews, but I don't think anybody could think that it was $16 not well spent.
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
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No featured comments yet—please check back soon!
Sandy over the Bahamas. Photo: NASA.
Boston.com's Big Picture has put up its Superstorm Sandy compilation, worth a look as always.
I have to admit to a bit of disappointment (from a purely photographic perspective). It's maybe not quite Big Picture's best work. After a strong opening photo, the general impression is of the more or less generic "look how bad it was" variety, a ticking-off of the standard list of "bad things storms do" without a lot of specificity toward what made this storm and the locale of its landfall unusual. There are exceptions of course, like the distant figures paying photo-homage to the crashing surf in #47.
The replica HMS Bounty, a 180-foot three-masted wooden tall ship, was lost with two of its crew of 16. U.S. Coast Guard photo.
Picture #19 (above) is a striking and distinctive picture from this tragedy, with the insignificance of the stricken Bounty tensioned against the vastness of the sea. That's a picture that will stick with me for a while. #31 actually conveyed real information I hadn't gotten elsewhere, by putting the conflagration on Breezy Point in perspective (other pictures I've seen, both moving and still, have been closeups that fill the frame from edge to edge with fires burning or fire damage, which emphasize drama but don't provide context). As a set of pictures I'm not sure the sum rises above the parts for me.
Mike
(Thanks to a number of tipsters including Ed Grossman)
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
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Featured Comments from:
Tom Duffy: "Just got power back. Enjoyed catching up with the TOP posts. Please keep those without power in your thoughts and prayers. With the drop in temperature last night, it's really getting long-term miserable."
David Dyer-Bennet: "Yeah, I felt the same way about the collection. I was attributing it to the source material he selected from, but on absolutely no basis; it could just as easily be the better photos were there but didn't get selected. Still pretty good. I was following the Bounty sinking closely because a man I know through SF fandom was on it at the time. We got to watch him get off the rescue chopper on video. We've had a lot of flooding the past few years (coastal and otherwise), and there's a certain sameness to that."
Kevin Purcell: "One of the two people lost from the Bounty was Claudene Christian, the great-great-great-great-great granddaughter of Fletcher Christian."
Mike replies: That is positively eerie. To those who don't know the story, Nordhoff and Hall's famous and popular 1932–34 books comprising The Bounty Trilogy
I mentioned that I "ordered" the big honker D800E and 35mm ƒ/1.4 from Lensrentals.com last night—due here on Wednesday for a five-day stay.
But in case you're not aware, Lensrentals.com is simply one of the best photography sites on the Internet—even if you never rent anything. Take a look at this recent post as an example—just fascinating, and it is information you will get nowhere else. At least nowhere else that I know of. As a former photo magazine editor, I can attest that the lack of this very class of information was always one of the real headaches of creating accurate and factual equipment reviews—even the biggest magazines didn't order multiple copies of every piece of equipment under test to take sample variation into account.
Highly recommended for your bookmarks.
Mike
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
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Featured Comments from:
Rob L: "I love Lensrentals—but admittedly, I'm more spoiled than most, as I live less than five minutes from their door. Funny how renting, or just pricing a rental, of a new 'must have' camera or lens can make you reevaluate it's purchase. If you find the rental price is too much, then you likely aren't that serious about it the first place. They've cured me of my NEX fixation, justified my choice to get a then-new D7000 vs. a refurbed D90, and knowing I could always rent that tilt-shift 24mm(that I've never rented) instead of buying it makes my marriage happier."
MM: "Another great thing about the lensrentals.com blog (besides Roger's entertaining writing) is that they provide unparallelled looks at what is often the most important aspect of 'lens performance': not sharpness, but how well the lens holds up. This page on various lenses' repair data from January to July, 2012 is pretty interesting, for example, and they do a lot a lot of teardowns of expensive lenses that you won't find anywhere else (maybe it's geeky, but I found the dissection of the $2300 Canon 24–70mm II weirdly fascinating)."
Ralph Steiner, Typewriter Keys, 1921
By Jim Hughes
I met Ralph Steiner when he was already in his 80s. He arrived in my office at the original Camera Arts lugging a big cardboard box filled to the brim not with prints, as I'd expected from a legendary photographer, but with reams of typewritten pages—long, complex stories written in an inimitably impish yet amiably wise style about all aspects of photography's art and craft. It was from one of those stories, for example, based upon years-long correspondence between Ralph and Ansel Adams, that I first learned how much Ansel disdained the word "pre-visualization," calling it redundant (which of course it is). It was in fact Minor White, Ralph noted, who had applied the "pre" to Ansel's own theories of visualization when talking about how the Zone System could help photographers imagine, in advance, at the time of film exposure, what the final expressive print should look like in black and white.
Thereafter, whenever he was in town, we would try to have lunch at a small, inexpensive restaurant I liked. It was located around the corner from our offices at One Park. Ralph was a wonderful conversationalist, a veritable font of knowledge, and not just about photography. One day, as we were about to enter the restaurant, Ralph pointed to an exterior wall decorated with elaborate tilework, an eclectic collection of various designs, styles and architectural eras that were never meant to go together but did manage to add some much needed color to an otherwise drab stucco exterior. I had wondered about the building's history. "A long time ago, I used to live in this neighborhood," Ralph told me that day. "This place was our local grocery. The building's owner once had a tile business, which at some point failed, probably during the Depression. Rather than selling or trashing his leftover stock, the man had decided to use it to decorate his building before renting it out. As you can see, he was a pretty good craftsman, but no artist."
Ralph's writings were so interesting, and to my mind so important, that I promised him a regular feature in the magazine. After which, he proceeded to inundate me with postcards with scribbled ideas for articles, etc. He addressed the postcards to "Jim Choose," since as editor, he felt, I was the one whose job it was to select what went into every issue. He signed each pithy message "St. Einer," complete with a little stick drawing depicting his head as a view camera, its bellows drooping toward the ground.
Ralph lived in Vermont, but spent his summers on Monhegan Island, something of an artists' retreat, off the coast of Maine. When he learned I was working on a summer "camp" of my own in Maine, he asked if my wife and I would like to spend a weekend with him and his wife on the island. "I’ll make reservations for you both on the ferry, which is usually booked solid weeks in advance," he said. On the appointed day, we drove down from Camden to Port Clyde, parked in an all day lot, arrived at the dock, I think at 6 a.m. for a 7 a.m. departure, and checked in. Our name wasn't on the list. Looked again, for every conceivable spelling, including "Jim Choose." No luck. There were, in fact, 90 people ahead of us on the waiting list. The nice lady in the booth called up to the captain in his wheelhouse who stuck his head out a window and said something like, "Everyone knows Ralph, I would have remembered, and he never said a word." She suggested that we might be able to charter a private boat, or maybe a seaplane, for the trip. All were booked solid. We considered calling, except there was no individual phone service on the island back then. So we thought, what the hell, it's a beautiful day and a picturesque harbor, let's just wait. At 7 a.m. the nice lady found us on a nearby bench. "Well," she said, "the first 88 must have gone off to enjoy the sun, so you're next!"
When we arrived at the dock on Monhegan, we saw the strangest sight. There was this apparition in a bright red shirt at the bottom of the gangplank, waving a big red flag at the end of a long pole and yelling "Welcome, welcome." It was Ralph. He hadn't forgotten we were coming. He just hadn't remembered to make the boat reservations. "What's with the flag?" I asked when we finally disembarked. "Well," Ralph explained, "When Zero Mostel used to come here in the summer, he would shamble down to the dock wearing all black and wave a big black flag at all the people on the boat. 'Go back,' he'd scream. 'Go baaack.' Now that he's gone, I thought I'd carry on the tradition, just change it a little to make it a bit a more affirmative. I'm a photographer, you know, not a goddamned famous actor."
Jim
(Image credit: Haggerty Museum of Art, gift of Therese and Murray Weiss)
Jim Hughes is the major biographer of W. Eugene Smith
Original contents copyright 2012 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.
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Featured Comments from:
Kirk Decker: "The article that Ralph wrote for Camera Arts comparing Edward Weston and Paul Strand is one of my favorite photography articles ever. I was in high school, and Edward was my photo hero. At that time I had just enough money to buy volume I of the Daybooks and a CA subscription. Best youthful money I ever spent. I still have the entire Camera Arts run. It was a great photography magazine, and I was crushed when it was over."
Mike replies: Re your last sentence: Amen, and ditto.
By Peter Turnley
An amazing twin story.
This morning, I was looking at my brother David's Facebook page and I came across an astonishing coincidence, if you can call it that. I saw that he had posted a photograph he had made of a man drinking a glass of wine at a bistro in Paris in 1973. As I looked at it, I realized that I had photographed the same man, in a different bistro, when I first went to Paris in 1975.
One has to think about the chance of this happening. In a city of more than 10 million people and a seemingly infinite number of cafés, not only did we photograph the same man, two years apart, but both of had come across the guy in a different bistro, and both of us photographed him at a bar counter with a glass of red wine...wearing the same coat. I must confess that after a life of experiencing the often unusual realities of being a twin, with a brother that also spent a life in photography and who is also a world-class photojournalist, this discovery really has me shaking my head with amazement.
Photographs by David Turnley (above), Paris, 1973, and
Peter Turnley (below), Paris, 1975.
If you'd like to see more about some of the rather surprising and amazing aspects of our twin lives and careers in photography, have a look at this "60 Minutes" piece from CBS called Double Exposure.
Original contents copyright 2012 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.
A book of interest today:
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Featured Comments from:
Jeff: "Have you considered that you may have photographed his twin brother?"
Vincent: "Never underestimate the compulsion of french people to hang around in bars. I can say: I'm one of them."
