By Ctein

Mike's column last week, "Shooting to a Theme," was one of the most thought-provoking columns he's written in a long time. The comments from the readership were equally insightful and inspiring. I sat down to write a comment of my own, and it rapidly spun out of control, turning back on itself introspectively, recursively, and artistically. At which point I realized it was an entire column in itself. And so, here we are.

Mike's notion is a most interesting notion, indeed, and deserving of much serious thought. Of course, it's very photographer-dependent. For example, my friend Laurie Toby Edison is nearly 100% project driven; you could say she's just about entirely theme-oriented. She's done a little on-the-fly photography, but I would say that it's far more often for the purpose of getting her artistic bearings, a preamble to the theme that will develop or as a kind of conceptual sketch pad. I don't even have to ask her about this; I'm positive she is happiest working to a theme.

I'm at the opposite extreme. The very first theme I ever worked is the "Christmas in California" project, and it took me nearly 30 years of serious photography to get to that point. I think my muse wants to be the exact antithesis of Laurie's and what Paul described in the comments to Mike's column—almost every photograph in my portfolio is precisely the result of heading out blindly and hoping to stumble over a "masterpiece" (well, that's over-egotistical, even for me—I'm willing to stop at calling them "portfolio-quality photos"). In my case, those hopes are reliably fulfilled.

Since doing Christmas in California, I have worked on only one more theme—the "Jewels of Kilauea" project. I have thought of two more theme projects I might do someday. I don't know that I ever will.

Ctein, Yellowed Pahoehoe Surface, Kilauea, Hawaii, 2000
from the "Jewels of Kilauea" project

Just to be clear, I am distinguishing between preconceived themes and ad- or post-hoc constructions. I may have created five monographs, but only Christmas in California is creationally thematic. The other four were all constructed after the fact by portfolio-mining (like data-mining) and mostly were purely circumstantial. E.g., the Scotland monograph/portfolio exists merely because I discovered that after ten days of photographing in the Highlands, I had enough good photos to make up a coherent portfolio/monograph. But I didn't set out to do that, either consciously or unconsciously (yeah, I'd know—don't ask me to try to explain how that works). They're just a motley of randomly stumbled-over photos tied together by geographic circumstance. It's the data mining and organization that turns them into a coherent work, but that coherence did not exist until after the fact. It played absolutely no part in the creation of the photographs.

Similarly, like Jeffrey Goggin, high-quality urban night photography has been a recurrent theme in my work since my college days, but it's a theme only in the ad-hoc sense; it's never been a creative theme per se. It's just me stumbling over fine photos again, except now I'm stumbling around in the dark instead of in the light. Night just happens to be a place where I know I'll find cool photos to make.

That's okay. My friends the Flying Karamazov Brothers coined the brilliant line, "It doesn't matter how you get there if you don't know where you're going." Improvisation is the spice of my life, and I don't mind stumbling around, because I stumble over the damnedest, most wonderful things. I know that I would absolutely, positively not get more joy if my work followed themes, preconceived or not.

Apparently my muse, unlike Paul's, is quite happy just stumbling along. Is this of huge import? No. But I find it very interesting. For some reason, my muse is truly tickled by Paul's conceptualization of stumbling over photos. I'm going to have to figure out why that so delights her, but it surely does. I'm sure it means something. I may eventually understand what that something is. But not today or tomorrow, I think.

In counterpoint to that, one of the two new themes I am toying with is a project of doing really high quality aerial photography at night, which is just becoming technically possible. If I did that, it would be a creative themed project, in contrast to my ongoing, highly-productive nocturnal stumbling.

Different strokes, for different folks, under different circumstances, at different times. Consistency? That's a bore.

Ctein

Ctein's regular weekly column appears every Thursday, almost always in the morning.

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

Bruce Davidson, Fight, from "Brooklyn Gang," 1959

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Thu, 02 Sep 2010 13:43:37 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89989617 Thu, 02 Sep 2010 07:01:24 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89903243 Wed, 01 Sep 2010 16:12:37 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89890790

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:50:24 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89890791 Wed, 01 Sep 2010 15:07:17 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89866209
*** Werbepause: Buchtipp - Vom Alltäglichen zum Besonderen!

You might be amused to hear that I've been considering doing a "Leica Year" exercise myself (this references not only the Leica Year anniversary post, but this post, too).

And I've been mulling over the idea of doing it with—get this—an M5.

Leica M5, c. 1971. Photo by "Photography by Mike"

Why?

It sounds quirky and contrarian. But there's a method to my madness. It comes from something our friend Stephen Gandy says on his mighty CameraQuest Classics website. He mentioned that Leica, in its entire long history, created "only five substantially new production Leica rangefinder designs. Those five are the Leica A, the M3, the M5, the CL, and most recently the M8. Most Leica rangefinders are modifications of the A and M3."

Stephen has "camera intelligence." A feel for what's real. Here, he's bang on. I'd never thought of it that way before.

So why would I do a year with an M5? One good reason: because I've never used one before. I've owned and used an M3; owned and used two M6's; used an M4 on long-term loan (I mean a year+); owned and used a CL-derivative, the Minolta CLE; owned and used an A-derivative, the IIIf; used an M7 on long-term loan; and tested and reviewed an M8. So of the five major Leica designs, the M5 constitutes the only major gap in my personal hands-on experience.

I'm all about learning experiences.

We'll see. No decisions yet. Things like this are fun to think about, though, ain't they?

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Mon, 30 Aug 2010 00:04:51 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89515054 Sun, 29 Aug 2010 20:48:54 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89515068 Sun, 29 Aug 2010 18:18:12 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89353068
*** Werbepause: Buchtipp - Vom Alltäglichen zum Besonderen!

The Nikon Rumors website, which was down for part of the day yesterday with a malware glitch, is back up and running clean again. Have a look.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Fri, 27 Aug 2010 08:04:18 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89188112 Fri, 27 Aug 2010 07:01:54 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89148044 Fri, 27 Aug 2010 00:38:16 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89122308

In a joint press release, Cosina and Olympus have announced that Cosina Co. Ltd., makers of the extensive Voigtländer line of products, many compatible with Leica M mount, will make lenses specifically for the Micro 4/3 standard currently shared by Olympus and Panasonic. 

Beginning with a bang, Cosina's first Micro 4/3 lens will be a dedicated, Japan-made, 11-element 25mm (50mm-e) ƒ/0.95 Nokton (this link and the next one to Google Translate) with a price rumored to be in the $900 range.

This follows just days after the announcement of the new Voigtländer 75mm ƒ/1.8 in Leica M mount, a Heliar-type with six elements yet just six air-to-glass surfaces.

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Thu, 26 Aug 2010 19:19:38 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89110336 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:47:30 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89110337 Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:39:31 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89110338

By Ctein

There I was minding my own business, a few weeks back, printing out chapbooks for my True Fans. (Both the chapbooks and the True Fan experiment will be the subjects of upcoming columns, so please hold any questions). I was giving my Epson R2400 printer a thorough workout, with eight pages of printing in each chapbook and many dozens of books to print. Consequently, I was monitoring ink usage closely, working to figure out how many cartridges of each color I'd need to be buying.

I was used to seeing the Epson print monitor utility's normal warning about some ink cartridge getting low. They're always getting low. Then it threw me a new one: "Parts are nearing the end of their normal service life."

That's really not something you want to see, now is it?

Off to my friendly, neighborhood Google. A key phrase search quickly turned up many messages in Epson printer user groups that informed me the odds were very high that message was telling me that the waste ink reservoir was nearly full and needed replacement.

What? You've never heard of a waste ink reservoir, let alone imagined your printer might have one? Well, where did you think all the expensive ink your printer dumped whenever you did a head cleaning or a cartridge change went? That's a lot of lost dollars, um, milliliters of ink that's going somewhere, and it isn't sitting in the sugar-cubed size sponge the printhead parks over. Not unless it's some kind of Doctor Whovian sponge that's a lot bigger on the inside than the outside. Those are just the wicks that lead to feed lines that send the waste ink elsewhere.

That elsewhere is a waste ink reservoir, and eventually it gets full. Well, that should be no big deal; it's a replaceable component. On one of the Epson pro-level printers, 38XX and higher series, it's just a $40 user-changeable cartridge, requiring no more work than swapping an ink cartridge.

The lesser printers, 2XXX series and down, are another matter. The reservoir's inside the printer. Deep inside. In the 2400 and the 2880 it's in the base, and you have to do a full stripdown of the machine to get to it. Even I won't attempt that. An Epson repair shop can do it. It costs so much that a lot of folks wind up using that as the excuse to buy a new printer, and they discard their old one. I'm not kidding. To me it looks like built-in planned obsolescence by Epson, and y'know, that's kinda obscene. In my always-so-humble opinion, of course.

You could ignore that warning, but if you do, one of two things will happen. If you're lucky, when the printer's internal counter hits zero, the printer will simply stop dead and flash a set of red warning lights at you. If you're unlucky, it'll keep printing until the reservoir overflows and leaks black gunk into your printer and out any gaps in the case onto your desk and floor.

Maybe it was time to succumb to Epson's economic manipulations and buy the 3880 I've been considering (there's currently a $300 mail-in rebate deal). Instead I did a little more reading in those user groups. Know what? There are a bunch of folks out there who'll happily sell you an external waste ink bottle for about $10. The reservoirs may be hard to get to, but the feed lines to it are often routed just inside the case and accessible by popping a few side panels. That's not hard.

How bad could it be to risk a ten-spot? I ordered an InkRepublic Waste Ink Kit (left; photo courtesy InkRepublic.com). Good thing, as a few days after it arrived my printer stopped dead, red lights a-flashin'.

Takes about half an hour to open the case (below), drill a hole for the feed lines, get the bottle's lines hooked up, and get it all back together. It proved to be a weak design. The lines were just barely long enough and the vent holes in the bottle cap were too close to the ink lines, so stray ink bubbled out of them. I covered them with tape and drilled a small vent hole near the top of the bottle away from the lines. No more stray ink. It worked. It didn't cost me a substantial fraction of the price of a replacement printer.

One still must deal with the evil red lights.

I'll give Epson a small credit; they've posted for download the Epson Reset Utility, which zeroes out the printer's ink counter. Clearly, someone there understands what a lot of folks are doing, even if it ain't by-the-book. The software runs under Windows only, but it worked fine for me with Windows running under Parallels on my Mac (a little web searching will find third-party reset utilities for just about any platform).

So, no more ink warnings, no more red lights, and when the waste bottle fills up, I can unscrew it and empty it.

I may still buy a 3880 come the fall (my reserve cash ain't there yet). I'm getting bored with having to swap ink cartridges whenever I change media, and having to pop in fresh ink cartridges every time I turn around (well, it feels like that). But, if I do trade up, it'll be my choice, not something imposed on me by a greedy design.

Ctein

P.S. Still in Montreal, folks; back Monday.

Ctein's regular weekly column appears every Thursday morning on TOP.

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Thu, 26 Aug 2010 16:13:15 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/89089915
*** Werbepause: Buchtipp - Vom Alltäglichen zum Besonderen!

"You can't go home again" was the title of one of Thomas (not Tom) Wolfe's most popular novels. It was about the vagaries of his author-protagonist's attempts to portray his hometown, the fictional Libya Hill. The phrase has entered the language. What's meant by it, usually, is that you can't recover your innocence, your youth, and your provincial home of origin once you've moved away, grown older, and become sophisticated. A condensed version: the scene in Annie Hall where Alvy tries to re-create the date experience in the kitchen with the lobsters.

As we talk about cameras, one thing leads to another. Someone asked if I'd write about "My Year with a View Camera," to which my thought was, "I think I already have." I started looking for this article, and then came across this one.  

To quote my old friend Bill Hickman, "Oh, dear." One of the problems with writing about a particular subject for a long time is that your opinions change, you keeps learning new things, and the world changes out from under you, and sooner or later what you said "back then" would not be what you'd say about the same subject now. 

Getting to the point: Re-reading my thoughts about the Wista reminded that three or four years ago I actually bought a used but like-new cherrywood Wista. And...it was just not enough like the first Wista I had. I bought the first one from an outfit called "Fields and Views" in about 1983, when I was in photo school. The wooden parts of that first Wista were constructed first and then finished, in the conventional sequence, using shellac or varnish or some other traditional type of wood finish—and the bellows were clearly made of real leather, because the camera had a distinctive, quite intoxicating aroma to it. The new Wista I bought had apparently had its wood parts finished first, using polyurethane or some other plastic-based varnish, and then CNC'd and put together. I knew this because there were very slight mismatches in the dovetailing, and the raw wood was visible where the assembly hadn't been perfect, which would clearly be impossible had it been finished after being put together. And the bellows were plastic, not leather. The newer camera was perfectly nice, perfectly serviceable, but had little of the charm of my original Wista, the one I spent my view camera year with. (And that I sold in a period in penury in the late '80s or early '90s.)

Then it occurred to me...that always happens when I try to replace a favorite camera or lens from the past. I've done it at least six or eight times...tried to re-purchase a favorite camera that I let go at one time, but still miss. I sold my Leica M6 in 1993 and tried to buy another one in 1999—the lens design had changed, and the newer camera didn't have the same feel. Wish I had just kept the first one. One of the best lenses I ever used was a Schneider lens on a funky old Practisix update called an Exakta 66. I got rid of that camera because of some anomalies that were purely user error, I'm embarrassed to admit. This gets worse: when I tried to replace it with another one, the brand-new camera came straight from the box with its focusing screen installed upside-down. Who knew? All I knew was that it didn't focus right. I sold it on. Only later did I find out about the upside-down screens. I even had a guy send me a beat-up old Spotmatic once so I could try the lens. I loved it. Did a lot of good work with it. Would you know, I never found another Spotmatic body that I liked as well as that first one? Go figure.

In fact, I think that every attempt I have ever made to re-purchase or re-acquire a fondly-remembered camera from my past has ended in failure or disappointment somehow.

Is that me, or is it just true you can't go home again?

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Wed, 25 Aug 2010 21:12:06 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/88974823 Wed, 25 Aug 2010 20:41:47 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/88892302 Wed, 25 Aug 2010 07:11:29 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/88852046 Tue, 24 Aug 2010 21:06:29 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/88824603 Tue, 24 Aug 2010 18:24:19 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/88814528

You probably remember our posts last year about the controversial Shepard Fairey poster for the Obama campaign. At first there was a great hunt for the photograph the artist had used as his reference; after several contenders were put forward, it transpired that the genuine photograph was one taken by Manny Garcia of the Associated Press. Only, Manny Garcia denied that the particular photograph was the property of the AP. Fairey, who considers himself a sort of guerrilla artist at one side from, if not above, the law, dissembled; Garcia and the AP squabbled.

Well, now, part of the dispute has been settled, as you can read about at the BJP online. How to interpret this news we're not exactly sure; if this were a Western, this would be the equivalent of the apprentice good guy—the Simon-pure rancher, say—getting mowed down by the baddie, in order to set up the movie's ultimate showdown. But it's not a western, and anyway, we're not exactly sure who's who in the drama. Stay tuned.

Mike
(Thanks to Nick Meertens)

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Tue, 24 Aug 2010 16:47:43 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/88792596
*** Werbepause: Buchtipp - Vom Alltäglichen zum Besonderen!

TOP readers buy a lot of books, and I get to see an accounting of what's been purchased. I study the lists for clues about what people like and don't like.

Just so you know, what I see is a general accounting of items purchased. I do not see which items were grouped together into an individual's entire order, and I am given no customer information at all—I don't see who you are, or where you are, or anything about your buying habits.

Here's what I see:

(Click on this to see it larger.) The first column is the item name, the second lists where the order was fulfilled from, third is the unit price, fourth is my commission as a percentage, fifth is the number of units ordered, next to last is the gross sale amount, and the last column, in bold, is TOP's slice of your pie.

The items are divided by categories (books, housewares, electronics, etc.), and I can get information daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly. The percentage of the affiliate commission goes up as we sell more items in any given month, which is why even small items ordered through our links help me out—they help raise the percentage for everything.

Wee hardcovers
Anyway, one thing I think I've detected from the data over the years I've been watching it is that people tend not to like little books.

Why is this? Is it because little books just don't seem...serious enough? As if a book that is physically slight must also be slight in importance?

Per'aps. I kind of like little books, myself. For a while, back when I didn't have a car and used the bus as my main mode of transportation around Washington, D.C., I made a desultory attempt to collect books in the "Oxford World Classics" series. Nowadays these are paperbacks of conventional dimensions, but originally they were wee little hardcovers in Oxford's traditional gold-stamped, navy blue cloth garb. I found it handy to carry one in my pocket for reading on the bus. I read all of Walden that way. Perfect bus book.

The original pocket-sized "Oxford's The World's Classics" were later reissued by other publishers, first Avenel, and finally as a  a limited set issued by Barnes & Noble. I didn't do a very good job collecting them: they're actually quite scarce, here in the U.S. at least.

On the Archie Bunker chair (I really need to set up a semi-permanent studio table in the house so I can take presentable pictures of objects), a snap of two Jane Austen titles from the World's Classics, with coins, a lens, and an Amphoto book for scale. An older Oxford Press version of Persuasion is on top and a Barnes & Noble issue of Sense and Sensibility (with dj, even) below. Note golden nostalgic glow, compliments of wacky mixed lighting.

Among photo books, a case in point is Clément Chéroux's little book about Henri Cartier-Bresson, published by Thames & Hudson in the U.K. under its "New Horizons" rubric, and by Abrams in the U.S. in a similar series called "Discoveries." This is another one Ken and I were discussing the other day. It really is a terrific little book, and I think it makes an outstanding introduction, and even a good basic book, about the photographer. M. Chéroux, who is a photographic historian and curator at the Pompidou Center in Paris (the book was originally written in French under the title Henri Cartier-Bresson: Le Tir Photographique), has good insights and has clearly done his homework well, and the book is crammed with added-value supporting illustrations of the type that publishers too often forego these days.

A good book, but little

Its problem is that it's little: less than 7" high. (It's correspondingly cheap: only $10.36 from Amazon U.S. and £4.69 from Amazon U.K.) If this were a premium hardcover of modest coffee-table size and cost $40, I'll bet a lot more people would take it seriously. 

Anyway, if you buy it, I recommend you actually read it. You'll get a lot out of it if you do.

Stopgap
All of the above is a very long way to go to get to my subject. After Peter's posts about Voja Mitrovic the other day (which I'm glad you enjoyed, by the way), a number of people contacted me saying, "I've heard of Cartier-Bresson, but who's this fellow Koudelka?" 

And here we have a dilemma. I have a number of Josef Koudelka books, foremost among them Gypsies and Exiles. But you really can't easily buy any of them today (take a gander at the prices at those links as a fer instance). The one book that's in print and readily available is Invasion 68: Prague (here's the U.K. link), which is a major accomplishment of photojournalism and a very important part of the Koudelka canon, but withal not entirely characteristic of his artwork.

So, what do do?

What I'd recommend if you don't know Koudelka and want to familiarize yourself with him is the little, inexpensive, and readily available Josef Koudelka from Thames & Hudson's "Photofile" series of pocket books. (Here it is for the U.K.) Yes, it's small: only seven inches (17.8 cm) high. But the reproductions really are quite good, lacking maybe just a little subtlety in the highlights, but conveying the essence of the pictures. And they're pleasing to look at.

Many of the iconic Koudelka images are present in the Photofile book, printed well enough that you can appreciate them.

You have to hold the book sideways to see them, but the designer hasn't wreaked carnage by running any through the gutter. The selection of work is excellent, perfect for an introduction. Many of the great photographs are here. It will give you a very good handle on what Koudelka is all about. And for $12.44/£5.57, it's tough to go too far wrong. Consider it a serviceable stopgap until Exiles or Gypsies is reissued in hardcover (which you would definitely hear about here).

People probably won't take to this solution. I expect to see only a few copies of Josef Koudelka show up on the orders page at my affiliate link*. That's too bad. But human nature is what it is, and I understand.

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

Taken with the new fast Nikon 85mm. Photo: Nikon

"Sample image time, boys—break out the pink wigs!!"

When you can see where the false eyelashes attach, is it sharp enough yet?

(Camera companies hate it when I make fun like this...I'm just never...reverent enough.)

Nikon has rolled out three new zooms and a new entry-level combination camera/camcorder, and—our topic here—it has replaced a justly famous and always-coveted lens, the legendary* 85mmƒ/1.4, with an update. Not just an update—it's a completely new-from-the-drawing-board redesign, and it's a super premium lens—ten elements. (You can make a good short tele with five elements; the granddaddy of the fast category, the legendary** Zeiss 85mm ƒ/1.4 Planar, had six.)

This is a focal length at which Nikon has traditionally excelled.

The new lens reportedly has gorgeous, soft bokeh
(this is a detail of a much larger picture).

The marketing brief was probably to update the ancillary functions—make it a "G" lens with no aperture ring, add full-time manual focus, silent focusing, a hard outer coating to prevent damage to the outermost element, and bring it into line with the styling of the rest of the new lenses in the line. The old version was plenty good optically. But Nikon didn't stop there. It went all out. An inspiringly aspirational lens.

Quit drooling on your keyboard!

The new lens weighs 595g, covers full frame, isn't shipping yet, and will list for $1,700. Specs are at the topmost link. The official moniker is "Nikon AF-S Nikkor 85mm ƒ/1.4G."

*"Legend" and "legendary" are Nikonspeak for "very good" when talking lenses, ever since Moose Peterson's Nikon System Handbook.

**Really.

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

By Ctein

I should have learned fairly early in my photographic life that camera bodies were not the reliable, infallible devices I imagined them to be (and that far too many photographers still imagine them to be). Back when I was in college, I remember the early reviews of the Pentax 6x7 commenting that the relatively straight film path in that camera did a much better job of holding the film flat than the serpentine path in cameras that used film magazines, like Hasselblads and Rolleis.

In truth, that's the only time I can recall a mass circulation magazine suggesting that this might even be an issue. Clearly insiders were aware that some things might be rotten in Denmark, but the news rarely made it to us consumers. When I talked about "pernicious secrets" in my last column, I was thinking of incidents like that. The big lie by omission; reviews rarely talked about how badly camera bodies performed, so one simply didn't think about the fact that they performed badly. So, I read it, noted it, and then managed to forget it.

In the late 1970s I bought a Canonet GIII QL 17. That was a relatively inexpensive and compact rangefinder that came equipped with a remarkably good ƒ/1.7 lens. It was a little soft wide open (would have rated a "very good" by the lens tests of the time), but once you got it down to ƒ/4.5 or ƒ/5.6, it was brilliant. I mean that both figuratively and visually. I was very happy with it.

Several years later I read an article that talked about the desirability of having one's rangefinder cameras periodically checked for focus accuracy. It was a notion that hadn't occurred to me before. I ran some tests on my toy and, big surprise, the focus wasn't anywhere close to being accurate. Being a brave soul I took off the top of the camera, dug into the rangefinder mechanism, and found the two set screws that adjusted the focus. Through a process of considerable trial and error, I managed to get the camera into some semblance of decent focus. I even got reassembled correctly. Usually that doesn't happen; I'm better at deconstruction.

(Please do not post comments nor send me e-mails requesting any sort of assistance on disassembling or adjusting your camera. If you can't figure out how to do it yourself, I'm not going to help you break it.)

Miraculously, that ƒ/1.7 lens became achingly sharp even wide open.

When I bought a Pentax ME Super with 50 mm ƒ/1.7 lens in 1983, the first thing I did was run some lens tests. Because, of course, the lens is what really counts. Right? I still hadn't entirely internalized the lessons from the Canonet. Stopped down, that lens would put in excess of 100 line pairs per millimeter on film without breaking a sweat (I learned later that I had lucked into buying one of the better 50mm lenses that's ever been made). Wide open, though, I was seeing a so-so-by-my-standards 60 line pairs per millimeter (the magazine test standards of the time would have given this lens a near-excellent rating).

Pentax ME Super with 50mm ƒ/1.7 lens. Photo from here.

Now I remembered that important lesson. I ran a focus test on my Pentax, and sure enough it was decent, within manufacturing tolerances, but it was not spot on. I tweaked it until it was, and I reran my lens tests. Wide open, that lens would put over 100 line pair per millimeter on film. At ƒ/4.8 I could hit 150 line pairs per milliliter.

After that, I never bought a camera nor tested one for review where I didn't give the body a very thorough going over. Rarely, if ever, did I find one that was in the best possible adjustment. That held true for a quarter-century. I'd be most surprised if it's changed today.

Of course, some things aren't fixable. Aerial tests on medium format lenses show that the best of them can peak at over 200 line pair per millimeter. I rarely, if ever saw more than 70 line pair per millimeter in 6x6 or 6x7 format; the cameras simply didn't control the film plane well enough. My Fujica GA 645 could hit 100 line pair per millimeter...were it not for the fact that the autofocus mechanism wasn't anywhere near that accurate.

Which takes me to my last point: I've just been talking about one aspect of camera performance: accuracy of manual focus. I haven't told you about the myriad ways that autofocus does go wrong, or the rather substantial problems with getting accurate and repeatable exposure out of a camera body, or the ways in which the camera body and the lens don't interface quite like they're supposed to (a shared problem). Oh, I could write so many more columns. I will spare you, if you promise to take the underlying revelation to heart sans elaborate exposition.

P.S. I'm off to Montréal for 10 days, so if responses to comments are few and far between, that'll be the reason why.

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Thu, 19 Aug 2010 17:08:46 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/88058295 Thu, 19 Aug 2010 07:13:25 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/88041872

I unshackled my leg from the desk yesterday and escaped to Chicago, where I saw the Henri Cartier-Bresson show with Ken Tanaka.

Ken, who started out as a fan and a booster of TOP, has become a friend. We first met at the first show we saw together, the great Eggleston retrospective earlier this year. Ken lives a hop skip and a jump from the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), and he's involved with the institution in some sort of way I'm unable to accurately report, so he knows the curators and gets to attend a lot of the insider events and so forth—and I kid him that the AIC is actually his private collection, as by his own admission he spends so much time in the building. He was seeing the Cartier-Bresson exhibit for the ninth time when he saw it with me. Seeing photographs is always good, and seeing lots of photographs is even better, and a visit to the Art Institute is always a pleasure. But to see a show in the erudite, engaging, and yet completely unpretentious company of Ken Tanaka greatly amplifies the experience. A fun day, well worth the drive and the Chicago traffic.

Brass tacks
I'm afraid I have to give the show itself a decidedly mixed review. Although the public response has been extraordinary, it's really an exhibit "by scholars for scholars," rather than a show for popular delectation. The selection is deep but in some ways puzzling: despite being overlong by twice, a lot of the great pictures are missing, and a large number of second-rate ones are present. There are plentiful "extra value" components, most notably a completely magnificent map of the world showing Cartier-Bresson's lifetime travels in glorious detail, and a single Magnum print presented next to a good reproduction of its own backside, showing all of the publication marks, stamps, and notes that it accumulated over its lifetime as a press photo. Fascinating.

The biggest disappointment by far is that many of the prints are just horrible. It is "vintagism" taken to an absurd extreme when truly great—I mean great—masterpieces are presented only in early repro prints that were originally fully intended to be ephemeral, two paper grades too soft and fogged and dimmed by time. It's one thing when the photographer is an independent artists and you're showing his or her original thoughts about a new work; it's quite another thing to pretend that the initial work-product of a working photographer has any of the same import or presence, or reflects his intent. Really, the fastidiousness of scholarship has overwhelmed the viewer's interests—and good sense—in many cases here. I wouldn't say that bad prints predominate—there are a lot of adequate ones and some good ones too*—but if you get the catalog, I think you'll find that the catalog reproductions are far preferable to many of the original prints on view! A strange reversal of the ordinary case.

From memory, this is my impression of what the print
of this picture looked like in the show.

So: recommended, but with real reservations. To reiterate: it's good to see photographs, and great to see H.C.-B. photographs. Lots of good and interesting things here; rewards on every wall. I'm certainly not sorry I went, and I doubt anyone else would be. But it's a deeply flawed show. It makes a weak case for H.C.-B. as a dominant artist in our field, although it's probably more interesting for those who already know he is. And it isn't what today's public deserves as a celebration of his greatness. Show me half as many pictures in their best printed form, even if it's not their earliest printed form. I'd take that any day.

Although I'd still want to see that marvelous map!

Mike

*I don't know this for sure, but, although there is a wide range of prints in the show that probably originated from many different sources, I'd bet there are very few Voja Mitrovic prints in this particular show: that is, they're not the prints M. Cartier-Bresson would have had made when a collector would wish to buy one from him or from one of his galleries.

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

Drawing by Chris Robinson

In Britain, several newspapers have devised novel and innovative ways to protest a craven ban on photographers by a football (soccer) club (team). The club is refusing accreditation to any outside photographers "in a plain and simple cash grab," hoping to force the media into purchasing photos from the team's approved supplier.

To protest the ban, one newspaper, the Plymouth Herald, didn't use photographs at all in reporting a recent game—it used drawings, including the one above showing the winning goal. Another paper, the Sun, ran a game report without once mentioning the names of the offending team or any of its players.

Barry Petchesky reports.

I hope someone from that part of the world will keep us apprised of future developments.

Mike
(Thanks to WeiLi Hur)

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Tue, 10 Aug 2010 19:22:29 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/87039164
*** Werbepause: Buchtipp - Vom Alltäglichen zum Besonderen!

Radical extremists object to being mistaken for common photographers.

As one member of a Coventry-based Al Qaeda cell explained to us, "I resent being treated like I’m some sort of photographer. [...] Photographers are a blight on society, and obviously I damn them all to Hell, but I find the assumption that carrying a camera makes me some sort of 'photographer' insulting in the extreme."

Mike
(Thanks to Erlik)

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Mon, 09 Aug 2010 22:56:22 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/86952325 Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:06:05 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/86952326 Mon, 09 Aug 2010 16:55:57 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/86899562 Mon, 09 Aug 2010 07:18:06 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/86887261 Sun, 08 Aug 2010 17:26:25 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/86887262 Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:41:27 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/86887263 Sun, 08 Aug 2010 16:13:31 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/86844086
*** Werbepause: Buchtipp - Vom Alltäglichen zum Besonderen!

B&H Photo has just put up a page of refurbished Nikons, including D90's for only $750 (normally $870).

Mike

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. ]]> Fri, 06 Aug 2010 16:31:22 +0200 http://rssmix.ru/visitor/getfeed/Id/1040/Item/86607291
*** Werbepause: Buchtipp - Vom Alltäglichen zum Besonderen!