The Online Photographer

By Marc Rochkind

I got my Apple iPad on its first day, April 3, but had to wait until today for the Camera Connection Kit ($29), which just arrived. The Kit consists of two separate receptacles for the iPad's connector: one for SD cards, and one with a USB female socket.

The USB socket is intended for connecting directly to a camera that's configured either for PTP or as a mass-storage device. I didn't test either, as I don't connect that way. Instead I connected a USB card reader and used that to read a CF card, which worked fine. Probably other card types work, too.

I also tried an Epson P-3000* portable viewer, which didn't mount at all. My guess is that most devices that aren't cameras or cards probably won't work. I leave it to others to try out all the possibilities.

Of more interest to me is what files the iPad can read and understand. When you connect a card or camera, the iPad jumps to its built-in Photo app and opens a new tab called Camera, not previously seen (by me, anyway). You select the thumbnails you want, or you can just import them all. You also have a button for deleting, but I didn't try that (and won't). After you import you're offered the option of deleting what you imported, but I didn't try that either.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Photo app imported my Canon G9 and Nikon D700 RAWs and a Canon G9 movie, in addition to JPEGs. It showed all of them full-screen, too. I'm sure it's just showing the full-size JPEG preview embedded in Canon and Nikon RAWs, not converting the raw data itself. But the intact RAWs are indeed imported.

What you import goes into an album called Last Import, and also an album in the Events tab whose name seems to be the date of the first photo. And everything you import goes into a catch-all album named All Imported. There's no way I know of to rename albums.

When you sync Photos with iTunes, albums imported with the Camera Connection Kit are left alone, not deleted, which is good. (Normally, synced albums no longer on your desktop or laptop are deleted as a function of the sync.)

You can transfer images from the iPad to your computer with the Image Capture app that comes with OS X, or with Lightroom. I understand that other apps like Aperture, iPhoto, and probably some Windows apps other than Lightroom work as well. (I'm embarrassed to say that my own ImageIngester doesn't see the iPad. I'll look into that, of course.)

As a previewer and backup device for field use, the iPad works okay. Its screen is way better than the one on the Epson P-3000, or any other portable viewer I've seen. Clearly an issue for production work is its limited storage: 64GB at most, some of which you'll be using for other things besides photos. Also, the iPad is somewhat cumbersome with its USB or SD connector, and maybe a card reader, too. My Epson P-3000 and many other portable backup units are self-contained.

Marc

Marc Rochkind is a developer of software such as ImageIngester for profess- ional digital photographers.

*Current version is the P-6000.

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

UPDATE: As I reported above, the iPad did fine with a 2GB SanDisk Extreme III card in a Kingston card reader, but when I tried an 8GB Kingston 133S Elite Pro card in the same reader, the iPad popped up a message saying that the device took too much power, and refused to mount it. Putting the card back in the camera (a Nikon D700) and connecting that way worked fine. So, although I have always removed a card from the camera to ingest it, when I travel with the iPad I'll just go straight from the camera. (And, as it happens, that's the only method Apple officially supports. I now know why.)

(Part I is here.)

Next we have to consider exposure, focusing, and lenses.

Lenses first. My ideal camera, being a "strassenkamera," would have only three lens types—normal, wide, and short telephoto.

Of course, the lenses would be newly designed, according to...well, my tastes. (I know this is getting a little silly. Bear with me.)

But here's the refinement: each of the three lens categories would have a closely-spaced range of focal length options. The normal lens range might have four variants: say 35mm, 40mm, 45mm, and 50mm. (In 35mm equivalent terms, that's a range from about 40mm to 55mm.) The idea would be not for anyone to buy more than one of the four, but so that everyone could pick the normal lens that best suited the way they like to see. Some people like a normal that's a little wider, others, one that's a little narrower. This way everybody could have exactly what they want.

And here's a further refinement: each lens would be available in low-spec and high-spec versions. The LS versions would have exactly the same design as the HS versions, but would be mass-produced using engineering plastics with a relaxed QC tolerances—but they'd be very inexpensive. The HS version of the same lens would be made of higher-quality materials, with metal lens mounts, made to much higher standards and tolerances. Naturally, they'd be much more expensive.

The reason for this? Purchase and purposing flexibility. If you use a normal lens 95% of the time and a WA 5% of the time, you could buy an expensive HS normal and a cheap LS WA. Or, if money is tight, you could buy a LS lens first and replace it with a HS version when finances allowed.

Next, all the lenses would be have matched imaging characteristics for a consistent "look." And naturally all of them would be optimized to the sensor size and coated for digital.

(To be continued....)

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

I had the rather satisfying experience recently of buying the camera that I once imagined. As I keep yawping about like a broken record, in 2005 I "specified" an imaginary camera type I called the "Decisive Moment Digital," and, last year, essentially bought the camera that I had envisioned—the Panasonic GF1. 

I'm enjoying the GF1, by the way.

The Panasonic and its brethren, the Micro 4/3 cameras, are doing well. I thought they would. When I imagined the DMD, in my mind that it was something that would be marketable.

(By the way, I am in no way taking any credit for large-sensor interchangeable-lens mirrorless compacts. I have no evidence that anyone from any camera company ever read what I wrote, much less acted on it.)

Now what I'd like to do is sketch an "ideal" imaginary camera that will never exist—and probably shouldn't. I don't actually think there's a market for it. I believe it would probably fail as a commercial product. I'm not suggesting any company should build it.

First, picture a Hasselblad body with a waist-level finder of the type which was ubiquitous on old Hassies and Rolleiflexes. For those of you who have never used a Hasselblad or a Bronica or a Rolleiflex with a waist-level (right, like such people exist! Ha!), the finder is basically a flip-up collapsible viewing hood, to block stray light from impinging on a viewing screen. I snitched this picture from an Ebay auction, which I  hereby atone for by linking to it.

If you really never have used an old medium-format camera with a waist-level finder (and yes, I know you exist), I should point out that the viewing hood pops up for use (the position it's in in this picture) and folds down for carrying and storage, protecting the viewing screen.

Now, on the right side of the box, where the knob is on this camera, picture a hand grip on a center post. The angle of the handle is adjustable in click-stops, so you can find the angle that's most comfortable for you. The shutter button is on the hand grip, wherever it would fall under your right index finger.

On the side of the body, where you can reach it with your fingers and thumb even when your hand is on the handle, is a shutter-speed dial. The aperture control is a ring on the lens. There's also (somewhere—I'd assume you'd need to get to prototype before you could determine exactly where) a little switch marked "V-H." The sensor is 4cm square. The "V-H" switch changes the orientation electronically from vertical to horizontal, in both the finder view and in the recorded file, using aspect ratios you select.

The back part of the box is the sensor module, which is removable and replaceable at the factory. (Ignore for a sec the fact that there's no factory.) The only viewfinding method is an "LCD screen" (or OLED screen, or whatever—a digital viewing screen) on the top of the camera, in the same position it is on the Hasselblad. The viewing screen is removable and replaceable as well.

Compared to this illustration, the mouth of the lensmount would be smaller, and of course there would be no mirror; this camera would be as mirrorless. Probably, the flip-up viewfinder hood would be larger. How much larger? I presume the screen would be as large as it could practically be without making the whole package unwieldy, say three inches square.

(To be continued....)

Mike

ADDENDUM: As several commenters have suggested, there would naturally have to be an option to shoot the full square format as well.

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. 

Every now and then I look into new cars. Not that I need or can afford or even want a new car, only that my old one is getting pretty old now (if it were a human, it would be on the verge of puberty—why is that way of putting it vaguely gross?) and although it continues in fine health (knock on my wooden haid) presumably it won't last forever. I should be prepared, I figure.

Plus, it's fun to go on test drives. A few months ago I drove a Honda Civic Si, which was a little barn-burner with a free-revving engine. With so much of its power so high in the powerband, it would force me to throw it around like I was a teenager. That would be my excuse, anyway.

But it had an odd, awkward flaw—for me. The seats. The front seats seem to be designed for 20-year-old Asian guys, who are presumably on the short side and shaped approximately like sticks. I am a 52-year-old overweight white American. I am on the tall side, and I am not shaped like a stick. More like a sack. The hard side bolsters of the narrow seats catch me strategically in a very wrong place: they jab right into my kidneys. With the coupe's taut ride, the evil side bolsters effectively transmit road harshness directly to my kidneys as though that's what they were designed to do. I indulged in a rather longish test drive (the Si really was fun), and my kidneys ached for 24 hours afterwards, like I'd been worked over by a couple of weak midgets who knew exactly what they were doing.

I could never buy that car. Not with those seats. Looks good on paper, though.

The principle is the same with cameras: you can only do so much of your shopping on paper. You've got to hold a camera in your hand, at the very minimum. And it's better if you can use it for a while before you commit to keeping it. That's why B&H Photo and Amazon have liberal return policies. You never can tell when the camera that looks perfect on paper might have something that's just obviously not a fit for you.

Everybody knows that, though. What I wanted to mention, before I forget for the nth time, is that there's a happy sort of corollary to that, too: we tend to learn to love the cameras we use a lot for work that's important to us. Even if it's a klunky piece of junk that requires loving workarounds. Take any tool you've got and use it every day when the nice weather finally gets here (it's coming, here in the northern Hemisphere, rumor has it). Spend a few minutes practicing with it every night; learn its features and foibles; take pictures even when you don't have anything to take pictures of; find a subject that interests you and pursue it. By the time you hit twenty or thirty pictures you love—when presumably you'll be up into the multiple thousands of frames shot, that is unless you're some kind of freaky prodigy—you'll have conceived a real fondness for your little picturetaker, even if it's a kludgey antique or a sorry-lookin' blobby black box way overstuffed with nanny features.

See if it ain't true.

Mike

P.S. Nanny Feature, n., a feature or functionality on an electronical camera that looks after you, on account of you're too ig'nant to know how to do it yourself or just too weak-ass 'n' lazy to do it yourself.

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"To be honest I was beginning to despair that I'd never feel as comfortable with the D90 as with the D70 that I used so heavily, but simply logging the hours of shooting did the trick. It's wonderful to have that feeling back—that of the camera being merely an extension of a limb."

There's not a lot of point to polls like yesterday's. The bell curve is right where I thought it would be, right where it should be. (There's even a little shelf in the bell curve at 22–24 MP, representing D3x/A900 aspirations.) All I was wondering was whether 18 MP in a Rebel is really going to be a significant draw. That premise looks a little soft, but still safe.

Polls like this one basically represent people saying "What I've got right now is perfect for me...right now." Thom Hogan uses polls for projections—that is, he knows that the curve would have peaked at a lower number if the poll had been taken five years ago, and he knows it will peak at a higher number five years from now. He looks at the rate of change. Because really, pixel counts (given today's technology continuing unchanged) are almost arbitrary numbers—like computing power and drive space, the numbers are normalized only for now, only in terms of this point in the march of progress. At one point, six megapixels was the bleeding-edge aspirational number, and now, only 2.7% of poll respondents would pick that level. (And I'm kind of surprised it's that high.) The number has moved all the way through the bell curve.

Complicating the projections for cameramakers, though, is that the bell curves don't move infinitely. At some point every sensor will have enough resolution, and people will stop caring. Then, the manufacturer who invests in a bet that more megapixels will continue to move product down the road (just because more megapixels have moved product up till then) will be out of luck. Predicting that point of sufficiency and not investing too much in overshooting it is one of the dicier tricks of product design. (An egregious example of that kind of overshoot on the part of manufacturers: APS. Pronounced "oops.")

Looks like most people are pretty happy with what they have now, though.

For now.

Mike

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Every morning, as part of my routine, I check Amazon's "Deal of the Day" to see if it happens to be photographically relevant. Today, after a near-endless parade of DVDs of TV shows, it is. Finally. On offer is a really quite responsive and highly capable 10-megapixel Canon Digital Rebel Xs DSLR with 18-55mm IS lens for $409. [Note: link removed 12/21; sale's over. Today's deal is a DVD of a TV series called "Torchwood," so we're back to normal. —Ed.]

It made me wonder. Is this the cheapest DSLR and lens I've ever seen for sale? I really can't claim to follow such things all that closely. Two landmarks in the history of the emergence of digital photography that I remember vividly were the advent of the Canon D30 [sic], a 3-megapixel camera introduced in the Spring of 2000 for the then-breakthrough price of less than $3,000 (just), and the original Canon Digital Rebel, a 6-megapixel camera announced in the summer of aught-three for less than a thousand dollars, which was equally remarkable. If not a little more so. I saw many very fine pictures come out of that appealing little camera, and I'm sure many people reading this have fond memories of one or the other of those two now-quaint devices. We thought both those prices were wondrous, at the time.

And now look where we are. A quick check doesn't uncover any cheaper DSLR-and-lens combo available just at the moment. And if this isn't the cheapest ever, what was? I'd like to see someone write a history of digital camera prices. I'm not sure I have the stamina myself, but someone who likes numbers and charts would find chewy stuff to feast on, I'm guessin'.

Mike

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By Steve Rosenblum

I've used Macs since 1985 or so and have long valued their intelligent design, thoughtful software integration, advanced OS, instant color management, and ease of use for photo editing. I even raised an Apple computer engineer! I am very knowledgeable about Windows-based computers, which I use extensively at work, but once I get home and turn on my Mac I heave a heartfelt sigh of relief.

In my humble opinion, Apple's one major misfire from a hardware standpoint in recent years has been their near-universal adoption of shiny, reflective monitor screens on both their laptop and iMac computer lines. These displays are absolute glare kings, so high in contrast and brightness that they are difficult to use for even semi-serious photo editing. I think Apple went to these screens because they make video and photos "pop," which probably helps them move computers in their brightly lit Apple Stores. However, they've been a disaster for us photographers.

I solved this problem for my desktop computer by buying a Mac Mini and the last-generation matte Apple Cinema Display. The Mini has plenty of horsepower for my style of photo editing, and the display is accurate and beautiful. Last year when I finally handed my trusty 13-inch G4 Powerbook over to my wife, I purchased one of the the 13-inch plastic-bodied Intel-based MacBooks. This computer does everything that I want it to do with speed and aplomb. But it has that cursed shiny screen! I put up with it for a year—not working on any photo files until I got home from vacation and could transfer files to my Mini—trying to find the one seat in a cafe without tremendous screen glare—scrunching down in my chair to find the one angle without reflections, etc. But last month I finally reached the end of my rope. I was going to sell the MacBook at a loss and buy a new 15-inch MacBook Pro, the one Apple laptop that you can order with an anti-glare screen from the online Apple Store.

Then, I came across an online story about a company called TechRestore that offers a service whereby you send them your shiny-screen laptop and they replace it with a matte screen display of equal specification and ship it back to you.

Otherwise identical MacBooks with and without the TechRestore matte screen

Intrigued, I Googled this and found that it won "Best in Show" at the 2009 Macworld Expo. Satisfied by what I found, I backed up my hard drive and shipped the MacBook off the TechRestore.

The cost for doing this swap for my Macbook was $169 with free ground shipping. They have a number of shipping options, all with a fair pricing structure.

I got the computer back a few weeks ago and it is exactly what I had hoped for: the MacBook that I wanted in the first place. The screen displays an accurate, beautiful image. I had no trouble calibrating it with my ColorEyes Display Pro. It displays a very usable range of grays for photo editing. Two thumbs up from me!

Before people start chiming in on this one, several observations:

1. Yes, Apple should just make this option available on all of its laptops.

2. If you are shopping for a new computer and want a Mac, you should just order the 15-inch MacBook Pro with a Matte screen—the TechRestore swap is mostly worth considering if you already have a shiny-screen MacBook or MacBook Pro.

3. TechRestore claims that this modification will not nullify your AppleCare warranty except on the new screen, which they warranty themselves. They say they are a certified Apple repair shop and will handle it for you with Apple. I have not tried that out myself and cannot testify to its legitimacy.

4. Last, but not least, I have no connection, financial or otherwise, with these guys. Just a satisfied customer!

Steve

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I was talking to a friend yesterday when the conversation reminded me of something I heard long ago. When I took over at the magazine I used to edit, the previous editor spent several days training me and explaining his vision of the magazine. One of the things he said—I am by necessity paraphrasing, since I can seldom remember exact wordings—"The three things a reader really needs in order to participate fully in the life of this magazine are a spot meter, a densitometer, and a sheet film camera."

Of course, he left out a fourth necessity—"a darkroom"—probably because he was taking that for granted. It was a darkroom magazine, after all.

I'm guessing not many people reading these words would consider those three things to be essential to their photography! (But does anybody?)

Thinking of the same question, I started wondering what three things a reader most needs to fully participate in photography the way I most enjoy it. Without much thought, and I guess somewhat flippantly, I blurted out, "an internet connection, a pigment inkjet printer, and a bookcase." (Leaving out a fourth because I take it for granted—some way to create original photographic images in digitized form, whether that's a digital camera or a film camera and a scanner.) 

Trouble is, it's been 24 hours, and I haven't improved on that list.

So my open-ended question (this is not a quiz, and there will be no test): What three things do you most need to enjoy or participate in photography the way you practice it?

I can stand some few flippant or humorous answers (I'm pretty sure I won't have a choice about that!) but I'm anxious to hear a few serious answers too because I'm actually sincerely curious....

Mike

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Amazon's daily 24-hour sale today is for a photo-related product (finally! I've been checking these every day), the Canon PIXMA MX860 all-in-one wireless scanner / copier / printer / fax machine. List $199.97, normal price $148.04, today's price $109.99. As usual for such products, consumables costs are significant (~$12.99 each for the four color dye ink cartridges, and ~$14.90 for the pigment-based black ink—actual prices vary). The unit is reportedly a best-seller and gets pretty good reviews.

B&H Photo is offering the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FS25, a 12-megapixel digital point-and-shoot with a Leica-branded lens (and image stabilization, dammit Gumby!), normally $229.95, on sale for $174.95.

I haven't used either of these products so I can't recommend them personally. Just passing along the deals in the event the info might be useful.

Mike

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By Christopher Lane

I’ll begin by admitting that I am a dyed-in-the-wool Nikon guy, and Leica wannabe. I love my D700. I have strayed to Canon and Pentax, but when the chips were down I always returned to the Nikon fold.

I've also owned several Leicas, but always wound up selling them. Most of the problems that plagued my M8 have been solved, but these days it’s hard for me to justify spending $4,000 on a camera...especially with a college-bound daughter. So, no Leica for moi at the moment.

Now, don’t misunderstand me—the D700 is perhaps the best DSLR available. But it’s big and heavy, and, for the most part, F-mount lenses are too. It would be wonderful to be able to throw a small, light camera over my shoulder, slip a second lens into my pocket, and go.

Even so, when Micro 4/3 was announced, I paid no attention to it. I was settled on Nikon and Leica, after all. It wasn’t until a friend kept talking it up that I discovered that it was indeed a very exciting development. I've been paying attention ever since.

'One Camera, Our Lenses'
At first I was drawn to Micro 4/3 because it had the potential to be my "Poor Man’s Leica" or the elusive DMD. While possibly true, this was a very narrow-minded view of the new format. Like many of you, I have a tendency to seize on one idea or get lost in technical specifications or reviews. Sometimes I simply fail to see the forest for the trees. It wasn’t until just recently that I realized that Micro 4/3 is not just exciting: it is revolutionary.

Here’s why. One Nikon DSLR is pretty much like another. Some Nikon DSLRs are full frame and most are not. Some are bigger and some are smaller. Some are expensive and some are cheap. Some are faster and some are slower. The company makes a digital single lens reflex camera. the bells and whistles vary, but at its essence each Nikon DSLR is pretty much just a variation on the same theme. The same goes for Canon, Pentax and Sony. A Leica M has looked pretty much the same since the dawn of 35mm photography, almost to the point of absurdity (witness the location of the M8’s SD card slot).

Only when one starts considering lenses does that picture change. The variety of glass available to the modern photographer is awe-inspiring, from super-tele behemoths to jewel-like pancakes. Unfortunately, each manufacturer has taken a slightly different approach to lens design and construction. For its consumer grade lenses, Canon favors ƒ/4 while Nikon uses ƒ/3.5–ƒ/5.6. Pentax has a wide selection of pancake primes, while Nikon has none. Panasonic and Olympus have lenses in focal lengths tailored to 4/3. And then there are those wonderful lenses from Leica. Each manufacturer has developed its own proprietary lens mount, further limiting your choices. F mount, K mount, M mount, R mount, 4/3 mount.

I call this the "One Camera, Our Lenses" approach. Nearly every market player uses it. They make one basic camera type and give you a choice of the lenses they think you want.

This is where Micro 4/3 is truly revolutionary. As Micro 4/3 is developed, it will take a "Many Cameras, Many Lenses" approach not tied to any specific lensmaker or camera design. So far, Micro 4/3 has given us the DSLR-like Panasonic Lumix G cameras and the Leica-sized Olympus E-P1, and now Panasonic's GF1 has been announced. That’s just the beginning. Doubtless there are many other designs possible, some of them likely to hit the market in the next few years.

Therefore, investing in a Micro 4/3 system does not mean tying yourself to one specific camera body type from one specific manufacturer. You can mount the same Micro 4/3 lens on an SLR-like EVF camera one day and a compact the next.

As the English say, "simply brilliant."

Micro 4/3 and more and more
Then there is the true implication of the "Many Lenses" part. I have long held that, in the digital age, your first and biggest investment should be your lenses. To a certain extent a digital camera's shelf life is limited, but the shelf life of a good lens is not. As I write, there are Micro 4/3 adapters available from reputable manufacturers for lenses in the following mounts: Four Thirds, Leica/Zeiss/Voigtländer M, Leica R, Nikon F, and Pentax K, and probably some others that I’m not aware of. There are sure to be others to come, but that’s already quite enough for me and my pocketbook. So now I can mount any lens from any manufacturer I like. How much I want to spend is the only limiting factor.

I remains to be seen if other manufacturers will take the "Many Cameras, Many Lenses" approach. Neither Canon nor Nikon seem inclined to innovate in this area. Even if they do, Panasonic and Olympus have a big lead, and each year there will be more of the Micro 4/3 "Many Cameras" and "Many Lenses." If they can partner with others to develop lenses for the Micro 4/3 mount, so much the better. Leica has clearly stated that they have no intention of developing a Micro 4/3 camera, but it will produce lenses with the Micro 4/3 mount, the first one being the newly announced 45mm Macro.

So hooray for two of the smaller players, Panasonic and Olympus, for breaking the "One camera, Our Lenses" mold. As I see it, that's a real breath of fresh air and a truly revolutionary approach to camera design and development. I’m excited to see what’s around the next corner.

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Featured Comment by Andrew: "My favorite lens on my E-P1 is the Zeiss C Sonnar 50/1.5."

A friend the other day said I'm a "rock star," which made me giggle. He was referencing the formidable reach of my influence and the broad sweep of TOP's popularity, not the fact that I wear my bathrobe until noon.

And he's right, in a way. I mean, look what just happened: I wrote an article about a type of camera I felt was needed, and BAM! A mere three years and ten months later, a manufacturer comes right out with a slick new camera that sorta comes fairly close to fulfilling my design brief, kinda. I think that proves beyond a doubt that the camera manufacturers are hanging on my every word, don't you?

Well, anyway. It's not like I know anything about what'll sell.

I thought I'd share with you another set of idle musings—not about something that I think we need, this time, just something I've been thinking about.

I started off by accepting the self-evident truth that DSLRs now come packed with ever more features and capabilities, with no end in sight, and simply wondering what a DSLR would be like if it had as few features as possible.

Y'see, I don't really like features. The more a camera can do, the less I figure I'm going to like it. What I want is for it to be really good at one thing—what I need it to do—and not distract me with anything else. Cameras are little computers these days. But I don't like computers. I like cameras.

Before we go any further, let me just say that a) I know this would never sell and b) I know no manufacturer will ever make anything like this. I know. You don't have to tell me.

I also know that you might want lots of features. Lots of people do. (Plus, not everybody will want just the features I happen to want.)

But this is my daydream, Gumby, dammit. Let's build an imaginary camera.

Pickin' an' choosin'
First of all, I'd start with a size and shape about like the Pentax LX (picture here. You might have to refresh your browser to see it). All things considered, I think the LX with its little hand grip is the most comfortable camera to hold and look through and use that I know of.

We'd make it full-frame. Let's give it a viewfinder as good as the one in the Sony A900.

We'd make it weatherproof. Remember that great picture of the Oympus E-1 being held under a running faucet? I can't find it, but I remember it. Like that.

While I'm talking about the E-1, let's give it the E-1's shutter sound, too. Quiet and smooth. Or the E-P1's—that has a nice shutter sound. (I'm not sure that's technically feasible with a full-size mirror.) I'd spend a good deal of time on the feel of the shutter button. Let's reference the old Contax RTS II for that.

For my money, body-integral image stabilization. I like Konica-Minolta > Sony's implementation of that feature best.

Here's where you'll laugh at me: I'm going to say...6 megapixels. Okay, maybe as many as 8 or 10. But the best possible quality pixels...the greatest color depth, the best possible DR, no compromises for low noise at silly ISOs. IQ über alles.

Speaking of ISO, I'd have just two settings, 200 and 1600, set with a sliding switch on the upper left of the camera back. (In fact the principle of having one analog control for one function and one function only would have to be given great weight.)

The camera would only shoot raw. The only JPEG processing would be what's needed for review on the viewing screen. It would have live view, though.

All "real" manual exposure controls of f-stop and shutter speed, with the three basic AE modes of course—shutter priority, aperture priority, and program. And full manual. I'd give it one quirky exposure feature, this one lifted more or less from the admirable Olympus OM-4T: a button that combined spot metering with exposure lock. Except instead of a middle value reading, it would put the spot-metered area 5 or 10% from the right side of the histogram. You could hit the button once for single-shot AE-lock, twice to leave it engaged until you turned it off. Okay, this is a feature, I'll admit.

Another feature I'd indulge would be a flip-up viewing screen like the one in the Sony A550 (picture here), so you could use it like a waist-level finder. (If you didn't have that, you could get away without the live view.)

I haven't decided if it should be autofocus or not. Maybe manual focus with focus confirmation.

I don't suppose I could get away with not giving it a hot shoe. I don't use them flash thingys, but I hear other people do. But no pop-up flash.

Naturally, a camera built to be as feature-free as possible would be notable for what it wouldn't have: not only no pop-up flash and no JPEG modes, no scene modes of course, but also no continuous shooting, no video. Could we get away with no menu?

Could we get away with no color? No, that's crazy.

In every parameter of responsiveness, it would have to be blazingly fast. Of course we've given it so little to do that speed in the few remaining parameters shouldn't be that hard to provide.

Finally, it would need a name. Back in the days of Chivalry, Nikon augmented its full-battle-dress F with a simple, basic, but very well made secondary camera that a lot of pros chose because it was more affordable and just as tough. So let's call my low-feature DSLR a "Digimat," in honor of the Nikkormat.

Rock on
You gotta admit, this is a radical idea. Completely impractical, arguably insane, but radical. I rock, don't I?

I do. In fact, I will say that except for the girls, the drugs, the money, the fame and renown, the sense of style, the devil-may-care lifestyle and personal charm, and the musical talent, I am a rock star.

...Just one without any features, that's all.

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John Camp thinks the new Sony A850 "looks like it fell out of an ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down..."

Photo: Imaging-Resource

This isn't its best angle. Read on.

...Which made me laugh, as usual. But it brings up two questions. First, is the A850 ugly? I think it's handsome. But that's probably because I'm thinking about unlocking the bank vault and getting one, assuming I can get the money to stop sticking to my hands. Second, does it matter what a camera looks like?

Just speaking personally, I haven't really cared much what "35mm-style" cameras have looked like since the advent of Wunderplastik. Bill Pierce coined the term "Wunderplastik," for big, blobby, black cameras made mostly of polycarbonate and stuffed full of circuit boards, in the late 1980s.

Quintessential early Wunderplastik: The Canon T90, 1986

Polycarbonate and its many cousins are great materials for making cameras out of. Light, tough, stable, cheap. But I can't say as how cameras made with those materials look any good. Beauty is as beauty does?

The Sony reminds me of the design gestalt of most Mercedes-Benzes since forever: ugly shapes so well built and detailed that they fool you into thinking they look sleek and purposeful. Like a fat gangster in a really nice suit.

Excessive, unsubtle, unproportional, but gorgeously attired: ugly...yet cool

The D700 and the 5D Mark II both handle great and work great. But does anybody think they look really good? Anybody at all? One person? No. I don't think that matters much to their fans, partisans, or owners. The Sony—unusually, for this day and age—has maybe 40% of the "fine-object" quality of great cameras, while most Wunderplastik has 4%. That counts towards beauty for me. Or towards non-ugly.

Besides, as I said about the A900, it's the view through it that really matters most. From the driver's seat, as it were. That's the angle you'll see it from most of the time. And how it looks best.

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Featured Comment by Calvin Amari: "I'm not saying that I'd conjoin with it in carnal riot, but, when looking at the A850, think tall brunette movie star of the 1950s sporting a cantilevered bust, a bit of sass, and a skirt split to her third rib. Those who don't like it are welcome to the camera equivalent of one of those cutsie-poo anorexic blonde valley-girl starlets: a white E-P1."

Featured Comment by JK @ Studio Hatyai: "I was living in Japan and working as a freelancer for Canon among other clients when the T90 was developed. They called in the famed designer Luigi Colani, who came up with some ideas that would look radically futuristic even today. They then folded his ideas into those of their usual design team. So the T90 'Tank' was a bit of a mongrel: half revolutionary, half conservative. But what a remarkably influential design it turned out to be."

It's raining and gray today, which means that I can't go whack a $4.50 bucket of balls at the driving range, and Lulu is going to be gazing lugubriously at me all afternoon because she doesn't understand (or, more likely, doesn't care) that if it's wet and rainy here it also means it's wet and rainy at the park.

But it reminded me of this...

Any photographer who works outdoors will probably recognize it. It's a "Rite in the Rain" waterproof notebook. You can use lots of different writing implements with it, but there's a matching waterproof pen if you want to get really set up.

As far as I know, the original Rite in the Rain was invented in the 1920 by a birdwatcher. (I've forgotten his name. Anybody know?*) But field photographers—landscapists, mainly, I suppose—have jumped on the bandwagon. If you need to take notes wherever you go, wet or dry, and have them survive moisture and mud, this comes in handy. A nice accessory for the bag.

(By the bye, I don't go to the driving range to take my frustrations out on the ball. More like, the ball takes its frustrations out on me. Damn little pellet just sits there, mute, unmoving, as if it's saying, go ahead, hit me. Hit me well, I ain't gonna go straight. Hit me hard, I ain't gonna go far. Beats me up, every time.)

*Jerry Darling. Thanks, Torbjorn!

Are you one of those photographers who keeps buying camera bags to excess, in a futile search for just the right one? I once knew a guy who had thirty camera bags—not because he collected them, just because he kept buying them hoping each time the new one would be better than all his others.

Well, there may not be any such thing as the perfect camera bag, but this has got to be a prime candidate for the coolest one. It goes on sale tomorrow at auction at Bonham's in New York City (Sale 17402, Lot 285), and it's expected to sell for forty to fifty thousand dollars.

And it's covered with dust. Not only that, but you want it to be.

It was used to store 16mm and 70mm film magazines for astronauts Jim Irwin and Dave Scott in the Apollo 15 Lunar Module. The crew performed two 7-hour EVAs (extra-vehicular activities) and came back to the LM covered with lunar dust, which got all over the camera bag. That's the dust.

Just the thing for the photographer who already has every kind of camera bag under the sun—one more, dingy with dirt from the moon. None of your friends have one!

Comes complete with deaccession papers from the National Air and Space Museum.

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Featured Comment by Hugh Crawford: "The last thing you would want to do with this is get anywhere near a camera. Moon dust is extrodinarily abrasive and corrosive. See:

What a Little Moon Dust Can Do

NASA's Dirty Secret: Moon Dust

NASA's Big Chore: Dusting on the Moon

Featured Comment by Rod S.: "Dave Scott and Jim Irwin performed three, not two, EVAs on the lunar surface. I watched all three through three consecutive nights here in Australia, where we had complete coverage because, as I recall, we took the feed directly from the radiotelescope at Parkes, which happened to have the moon in sight for each (they were 24 hours apart). The experience is one I treasure - along with meeting and talking with Jim Irwin in 1989, two years before he died.

"Andy Chaikin's book A Man on the Moon: The Voyages of the Apollo Astronauts reports that the durations of the three moonwalks were, 1st: 6 hrs., 32 min.; 2nd: 7 hrs., 12 min.; 3rd: 5 hrs., 40 min.

"Here in Australia, it's the morning of the 16th of July, the 40 year anniversary of the launch of Apollo 11."

UPDATE from Bob Peterson, July 16th: "According to the auction Web page Lot 285 'Sold for $36,600 inclusive of Buyer's Premium' "

Many photographers—many of us—would like it if there were a radically simplified DSLR. There never will be, however.

I have had some conversations with readers indicating that many people don't have a very clear idea of what's technologically possible or plausible in camera design. Some of those people feel that what's on offer is pretty much all it's possible for the camera companies to make, and if they could do anything differently, they would. Without paddling too far up that particular tributary, it should at least be obvious to everyone that a simplified DSLR is a valid possibility—all the would be required would be to start with a complicated one and take stuff out.

Others will argue that technological plausibility and market viability are two different things. And they're right. It's entirely possible that a simple DSLR would appeal to such a small subset of the buying public that its development would never pay for itself. Too small a niche, in other words.

But let's put aside those objections too, and stipulate that the majority of camera buyers would like, appreciate, and wish to buy a simple camera (that's assuming facts not in evidence, I realize. Follow the logic). There still would never be a radically simplified DSLR.

Why? Simply because none of us could ever agree how to define "simple." What's extraneous to you is essential to me, and what's essential to me is extraneous to the next guy. If you started with one of today's radically over-featured electronic wonders and deleted 90% of all the fripperies that weren't absolutely necessary, here's what the camera companies would hear, over and over again, from everybody: "I absolutely love the idea of your new Nonetax ABC, and I had been planning to buy one—until I found out that it doesn't have [feature x]. Why oh why couldn't you have built the Nonetax exactly like it is, but with [x]?"

"I absolutely need hot pixel mapping because I do astrophotography. How could you have left that out?"

"I absolutely must have mirror lockup because the shutter noise scares praying mantises. What were you thinking? There are thousands of us mantis photographers, as you can see if you go to alt.binaries.insectivore."

"Sensor cleaning is not optional for me because I do all my photographing in a drywall factory."

"Multi-point focusing is a must when photographing flocks of budgerigars in the wilds of Busta Rotton."

Everybody's "must have" would be slightly different from the next person's, because we all have different needs and we all have gotten used to having certain things from past cameras we've owned and loved.

So we'd all like a camera that was stipped to just the essentials. The problem is that everybody's essentials are different. In light of that reality, the best a camera designer can do is to lard on the features with a spatula—and even then, people come up with things they wish were there, but aren't.

Same as it ever was.

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Featured Comment by Adam Richardson: "I work at frog design, one of the world's largest product design consultancies, and so am intimately familiar with the challenges posed by the paradoxes described here. It doesn't just apply to SLRs, but virtually every kind of category: consumer, industrial, services, software, hardware, you name it.

"Unfortunately there aren't easy answers. There is a lot of truth that people buy on features, but then often come to regret the plenitude of features once they later live with the product. Unfortunately that doesn't prevent them from re-requesting more features the next time they buy. So-called opportunity costs are the problem.

"For this side of problem, I refer you to this excellent article in the New Yorker by James Surowiecki about why feature creep occurs (answer: customers).

"On the other side, Rob Haitani, who was the software architect for the original Palm Pilot, says that companies not making considered edits of features is a cop-out. I blogged some quotes from him from an interview he did years ago.

"In the camera realm, the closest to the Palm is probably Pure Digital, who make the Flip and Minio super-cheap digital cameras and camcorders. Unlike the large Japanese corporations they compete against, who are primarily hardware companies pursuing specifications and feature bragging rights, Pure sees itself as a software company who happens to make hardware. They have a very different perspective that focuses on fun, simplicity, and the equipment getting out of the way. As a result they are #2 behind Sony in the camcorder market, after three years of being in it, and achieved something like 14,000% growth (not a typo). Of course, they are not competing with SLRs.

"But we have seen this play before: The first mass adoption of film SLRs in the '70s and '80s, which led to giant zoom lenses being carried around to snap vacation pics. People got fed up with it and realized that small cameras did just fine. The same thing will happen today—a lot of people who are today using SLRs will eventually 'give up' and shift to point-and-shoots or camera phones. But for the time being, SLRs will continue to be the biggest-growing area."