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  • The ‘Match Technical’ Advantage

    The ‘Match Technical’ Advantage

    I used to carry a fairly large camera bag. I needed one for all that big, bulky SLR gear I’d lug around the streets.

    But this year, after having spent the previous twenty viewing the world through the lenses on my SLR, I took a step sideways. It was a small step — only 3 or 4 centimeters in distance — but its impact was huge. No longer was I peering at my subjects through a complicated configuration of optical discs and pentaprism mirrors. Instead, I began to frame my photos through a simple little window just a little to the left of the lens. In other words, I began to use a rangefinder. Suddenly there was a lot of room in that old camera bag of mine. And, though tempted to join the ‘puppy in pack’ trend, I instead opted to downsize my bag.

    Some would argue that the little sideways step that your eye takes when using a rangefinder is, in actuality, a step backward. But for candid photographs — in which responsiveness, size, vision, and intuitiveness weigh heavily on your ability to capture the shot — the switch to a rangefinder was, for me, a monumental leap forward.

    My chosen rangefinder, the Leica M8, does not replace my SLR. The SLR’s adaptability — particularly with long focal lengths and tilt/shift lenses — insures it a permanent place in my professional kit bag. But the rangefinder has become my ‘go to’ camera for reportage, street, documentary, candid, travel, and just plain ‘fun’ photography. It has changed the way I approach these subjects, and made me a better photographer for it.

    I took to the Leica instantly — coming to grips with its myriad quirks, methodologies, and differences quite easily. Strangely, in spite of the ease with which I was able to mentally grasp the M8, I had no such luck physically. Frankly, the Leica M8 was a hard camera to hold. Gripping it in one hand was a pain — both figuratively and literally. After several months of walking around town squeezing the heck out of the Leica, I finally caved to my internal wimp. I decided to order a “Thumbs Up” device from Match Technical.

    Upon landing on the Match Technical website, I was presented with a plethora of products designed to soften many other minor, but irksome, Leica issues. Not only would the Thumbs Up solve my need to securely and comfortably grip the camera, but Match Technical also offered viewfinder magnifiers to improve the focusing of longer lenses. And they sold a lens coding kit, which would enable me to place precise little scribbles on my non-coded lenses — whether vintage Leica or modern Voigtlander — and thus unlock all the benefits of digitally coded Leica lenses. Needless to say, my order grew to include all these items and, for good measure, Match Technical even threw in a free “soft release” button.

    So, the big question is this: Do Match Technical’s products belong in my camera bag? Can they really improve the handling and usability of the Leica? Let’s take a look at them, case-by-case:

    Thumbs Up CS-3

    This is the product that first drew me to Match Technical. Leica’s digital rangefinders, while hanging nicely from a strap, do not dangle nearly so ergonomically from one’s hand. Unlike modern SLR’s, their rectangular shape offers no curvy, organically-shaped mound around which to wrap your hand. If you walk around with your Leica gripped in-hand — finger on the shutter release and ready to capture whatever fleeting images flash before you — then you, too, will experience the same kind of wrist and forearm fatigue I did.

    But that was before I purchased the Thumbs Up. Even though it’s nothing more than a curved piece of metal that slips onto your camera’s hot shoe, its effect is profound. Like its name suggests, it’s essentially just a thumb rest. If, like me, you learned your craft back in the days of film, you were probably accustom to using the film advance lever as a kind of thumb rest. With the demise of film came the demise of the film advance lever and, consequently, a key ergonomic pressure point on rangefinder cameras. The Thumbs Up gives us back our thumb rest — only now it’s more ergonomically shaped and positioned than the old film advance lever.

    Thanks to the Thumbs Up, I can wrap the strap around my wrist, rest my finger on the shutter release, and carry my Leica in one-hand: ever ready to fire off a shot at a second’s notice. Cleverly, a cold shoe mount is built-in to the CS-3 — essential since the CS-3 attaches to the Leica by sliding onto the hot shoe. Without the cold shoe, us wide-angle guys wouldn’t be able to attach our external viewfinders. In those very (VERY!) rare instances when I need to mount a Pocket Wizard to trigger an external flash, I simply slide off the Thumbs Up to access the hot part of the shoe.

    I’ve also discovered another unforeseen benefit of the Thumbs Up — stability. With the CS-3 mounted on my M8, I’m able to hold the camera a little steadier, meaning I can use slightly slower shutter speeds. The effect isn’t huge — maybe a half stop — but in difficult low light situations, I appreciate any advantage I can get.

    Truth is, I wasn’t going to review the Thumbs Up because I assumed everyone already knew about it. But photographers (including experienced Leica shooters) who look at my Leica, all claim to have never seen nor heard of this device — so I thought I’d do my part and “spread the word.”

    Bottom Line: I’d weld the Thumbs Up to my Leica if I didn’t occasionally need to mount a Pocket Wizard. It makes a great product even greater. What more could you ask for?

    E-Clypse MAG 1.25x 34 Viewfinder Magnifier

    I rarely use long lenses on the Leica. Repeatable focusing precision with telephoto lenses is simply not one of the rangefinder’s fortes. Fortunately, for those times when one needs the extended range of, say, a 90mm lens, Leica’s viewfinder has a thread mount for accepting optical adapters — adapters like Match Technical’s 1.25x Magnifier.

    Match Technical didn’t invent the rangefinder eye magnifier, but they certainly made it affordable. I purchased their 1.25x magnifier to use with my 1991 50mm Summicron. In reality, I found little need for it. Even though the 50mm has a 67mm field of view on the M8’s 1.33x crop sensor, I was able to focus it just as accurately without the magnifier. So the magnifier saw little use. It was only recently, when I picked up a beautiful 1996 90mm Elmarit, that the magnifier’s benefits became tangible — making that lens focus quicker and more accurately. That’s how I was able to quickly and accurately focus the 90mm when I spotted this handsome pup stretching his legs after, I assume, escaping from his owner’s backpack.

    The magnifier is well made. It threads onto the Leica perfectly, and does not — in spite of its wallet-friendly price — give the impression of being “lesser quality” in any way.

    There is one caveat worth mentioning to anyone who has never used a viewfinder magnifier: you may need to use a different diopter with a magnifier than you do without. This is something I hadn’t actually considered but, in retrospect, makes sense. I’m a near-sighted contact lens wearer who has reached that “certain age” where I’ve also become far-sighted. Rather than spend my day fumbling for different pairs of glasses, I choose to wear monovision lenses. This means the contact lens in my right eye is optimized for viewing distant objects, while the contact lens in my left eye is optimized for seeing objects at arms’ length. I’ll spare you the gory details about the near-psychotic brain malfunctions I had to endure when first adjusting to this kind of vision. Suffice to say, once your brain finally adapts to monovision, it’s great. Since my right-eye is focussed for distance, I’m able to use the Leica without any diopter on the viewfinder. But, when I use the magnifier, I actually have to switch to my left eye. That’s because the magnification makes objects appear ‘closer’ and, as a result, I can no longer see them clearly with my infinity-focused eye. So, when I use the magnifier, I need to switch from right-eyed shooting to left-eyed shooting. Since I normally shoot left-eyed with an SLR and right-eyed with a rangefinder, this isn’t a problem for me. But, for those of you who need reading glasses and don’t wear monovision contacts (or aren’t comfortable switching viewing eyes), keep in mind that you might very well need to purchase diopter correction when you purchase a magnifier.

    Unlike the Thumbs Up, which I would describe as a “must have” product for any Leica M-series digital shooter, the E-Clypse Magnifier is more of a specialty product that becomes beneficial mostly for long lenses (though I have, on occasion, also used it to improve my focussing at night).

    Coder Kit

    With the release of the digital M-series, Leica introduced a new lens coding system. Coded lenses identify themselves to the camera body, meaning the camera’s software can apply the proper optical corrections to the RAW file while also identifying the lens in the camera’s EXIF data. You can send your older, uncoded lenses to Leica and they’ll code them for you — for the usual astronomical Leica fee. If your lenses are all new, you’re fine. But if you have vintage Leica lenses, you’re stuck paying for an update. And, if you’re using third-party lenses from Zeiss or Voigtlander, then what?

    That’s where Match Technical’s Coder Kit comes into play. Leica uses a 6-bit coding system to identify lenses. The code is simply a series of black and white dots on the flange of the lens. A sensor, built-in to the lens mount on the digital M body, scans the dot pattern on the lens and codes the RAW data appropriately. The Coder Kit is nothing more than a circular stencil, a pen, and a reference chart. The stencil has six tiny holes stamped in it. When you snap it over the lens flange, the holes line up exactly where the black and white dots would be on a Leica coded lens. Use the reference chart to look up the dot pattern for the particular lens you want to code, and then use the permanent marker to blacken the necessary holes.

    Using this technique, I was able to code my Voigtlander 35mm f/1.4 Nokton as if it were a Leica 35mm f/1.4 Summilux and, thus, take advantage of the in-camera RAW adjustments. Similarly, I coded my Voigtlander 15mm Heliar as if it were a Leica 16-18-21 Tri-Elmar. As shown in this photo, this allows the camera to automatically fix both the color and luminosity vignetting that would normally be evident in that lens.

    There are, of course, work-arounds to coding your lenses. You could use a program called Cornerfix, which produces excellent results, but significantly slows your workflow. Those fortunate enough to purchase the new M9 are less likely to need the Coder Kit, since users of that camera can manually select the mounted lens from a list; thus negating the necessity for automatic detection. But for anyone who uses an M8 or M8.2 and has non-coded lenses, the Coder Kit is a must-have purchase.

    “Bip” Mini Soft Release

    I didn’t actually order the soft release. In fact, I didn’t even want a soft release. But when I placed my order with Match Technical, they tossed one in for free. “Just give it a try,” said Match Technical’s Tim Isaac, “and you’ll never want to shoot without it.”

    For those who aren’t familiar with this age-old concept, I’ll give a brief overview: The soft release is a little brass button that screws into the Leica’s threaded shutter release, raising the button’s height significantly. Once installed, you no longer use the tip of your finger to press down directly on the shutter button. Instead, you lay your finger over the shutter button and, because of its height increase, you can now trigger the shutter with only the slightest twitch of your finger.

    So, at Tim’s suggestion, I tried it. And I disliked it for several reasons. First, I’ve been releasing shutters with my finger tip for a couple of decades. It felt very unnatural to release the shutter with the inside of my knuckle joint. Second, the shutter becomes very sensitive with a soft release. I know that’s the whole idea, but I spent two full days taking hundreds of accidental photos of people’s feet (which is not, in spite of appearances, how this blurry and edgy street photo was taken). Third, it kept running down my battery. I know this last complaint seems implausible, but there’s a logical reason: every time I put the camera in my bag, the shutter release was so sensitive that the bag itself would trigger it. I’d go out with a fresh battery, put the camera in my bag while I grabbed a cup of coffee, and by the time I’d pull the camera back out of the bag, I’d have a couple hundred photos of the inside of my lens cap, thus draining the battery. When Tim wrote to ask how I liked the products, I told him of my troubles with the soft release. “Stick with it,” he said, “and I guarantee you’ll get to like it.”

    I’m no quitter, and I could easily see the theoretical advantages of this device. So I decided to give it another week. First, I got in the habit of turning off the camera whenever it went in the bag — that prevented my camera from constantly taking photos of its own lens cap. Next, I learned to relax my index finger when carrying the camera and, within a day, I’d put an end to accidental shutter releases. Finally, I got comfortable with triggering the shutter with the inside of my knuckle.

    Within three days, I’d gone from annoyed to enamored. I was able to fire off shots quicker, easier, and with far less camera movement. With the soft release, I was able to hand-hold long shutter speeds that would have previously been impossible. I could no longer imagine using the Leica without it, and I lived in constant fear that it would come unscrewed, and I would lose it. On several occasions, I pulled the Leica from the bag to find it sans soft release. A wave of panic would wash over me, but I would always find the little button in the bottom of my camera bag — breathing a sigh of relief as I’d thread it back on to the shutter release.

    It was then that I realized Tim Isaac wasn’t just ‘being nice’ when he gave me the free soft release — he was simply practicing the sound marketing strategies taught in any “Drug Dealing 101” class. Specifically, “Give the first one away to get them ‘hooked,’ and they’ll forever have to buy from you.” Sadly, last week, I finally lost that little soft release and my Leica just isn’t the same without it. Curse you, Tim — now I’ll have to buy a case of ’em.

    Conclusion

    The Thumbs Up, E-Clypse Magnifier, and Soft Release button add only a minimal amount of weight and volume to my camera bag. But the effect they have on my camera’s usability is profound. These products, like the Leica itself, accompany me everywhere. The Coder Kit stays home — not because it isn’t a useful product, but because I don’t need it in the field. I’ve had to code my Voigtlander lenses only once, and the blackened marks have remained on the flange. This isn’t due so much to the ‘permanent’ ink, as to the fact that Voigtlander cuts a shallow groove in its flange, and the lens markings are made inside that groove — thus preventing them from wearing off when the lens in mounted and unmounted from the camera.

    Match Technical products may not visually accessorize your camera bag as well as a puppy, but they’re a darn sight more practical.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson

    If you find these photos enjoyable or the articles beneficial, please consider making a DONATION to this site’s continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site — serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls.

  • What Color is Happy?

    What Color is Happy?

    We humans are quick to embrace new technologies, aesthetics, techniques and trends. We are equally adept at discarding the old ones. And, while few of us would choose to live in the past, its wanton abandonment comes with a heavy price — ignorance.

    In 1905, George Santayana elegantly summarized one manifestation of this ignorance when he wrote, “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

    A second manifestation of ignorance, stated much less elegantly but dating back to at least the 15th century, says “don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.” It’s a curious phrase with murky origins, so I’ll translate it into photographic terms: “Don’t ignore black & white simply because your camera shoots in color.”

    Photographs are an exaggerated reality. A captured moment passes in an instant but, by freezing that moment, we allow the eye to explore it at a leisurely pace — discovering tiny details while, simultaneously, using our own prejudices and proclivities to fill in those that are missing. Because of this, photographers need to direct the eye through a photograph — helping the viewer identify the most important elements. One way of doing this is to make sure that no unwanted elements are included in the frame. A good photographer will always carefully consider the geometry and perspective that best conveys his message. Just because a wide angle lens captures a greater percentage of the world in front of your camera doesn’t mean you should use it. After all, the wider the field of view, the more likely you are to photograph elements that are of no importance to the ‘story’ you’re trying to tell. The harder it is for the viewer’s eye to find the subject, the less impact your photo will have.

    Which brings us to color. Just because your camera can capture a color image doesn’t mean that color is an important element to that particular photo. In much the same way that an inappropriately used wide angle lens captures unimportant and distracting detail, so too can color be a distraction. Unfortunately, since most humans see the world in color, they expect to see the same vibrant hues in photographs — rejecting anything black & white, and thus limiting a photographer’s ability to tell a story.

    When I produce an image, I let the photograph, itself, tell me whether it should be black & white or color. If color detracts from my message, I’ll process it in black & white. This is why most of my street photography is monochromatic. Look, for example, at each of the images in this article.

    The four little girls dancing beside the stage attracted my attention for two reasons. First, they were absolutely adorable. And second, they were as oblivious to the audience as the audience was to them. I want the viewer to be aware of only two subjects: the little girls (primarily) and the background audience (as a single entity). Including color in this image would ruin it — the audience would no longer be a homogenous object but, instead, a cacophonous sea of multiple colors. Brightly colored balloons, banners, and clothing would all compete for the attention of the viewer’s eye — attention I want directed at the girls.

    The same reasoning applies to the ‘street corner therapist’ photo at the top of this article. There are, again, two important elements in this photograph: the woman holding the sign, and the reaction of the crowd upon seeing it. Nothing else is important. It doesn’t matter what color her jeans are. It doesn’t matter that the leaves on the trees are starting to change color. The passing car is equally as insignificant — so why bring attention to it by showing its color? The impact of this photo is diminished significantly by color.

    Look at the night photo of the club-goers. The image is about expression and body language. It’s about the confident attitude of the woman and the sheer delight of the two men. If it were in color, the eye would migrate away from the trio and toward the multi-colored neon in the background. But that’s not where I want the viewer’s eye to focus. Again, color would distract the viewer from my intended subject, so I’ve chosen black & white.

    It’s unfortunate that, in the name of ‘progress’, photographers have been forced to abandon one of their most important tools — the ability of black & white to create a kind of visceral impact that color can’t always provide. New technologies, aesthetics, techniques and trends are, ultimately, a good thing — but not if they come at the expense of those that came before.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson 

    If you find these photos enjoyable or the articles beneficial, please consider making a DONATION to this site’s continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site — serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls.

  • The Mythical Invisible Shield

    The Mythical Invisible Shield

    I was approximately 100 feet up a vertical mountain face when I first became aware of my “invisible shield.” It was the summer of 2008, and I was on a photo assignment for BC Parks. Thirty minutes into my slow but steady ascension, I paused briefly to survey my predicament. I had my left foot wedged firmly into a small crevice. My right hand clutched a tree root protruding through a solid rock ledge immediately above my head. My eyes searched fervently for a place to anchor my two unsecured limbs, but there was nothing. The rock outcropping above me was impeding my upward progress, and the small fissure through which I had chosen to ascend afforded no obvious means to circumnavigate it. I was intent on giving the BC Ministry of Environment a singularly unique view of this particular provincial park, and was convinced such a shot was waiting at the pinnacle. All I had to do was haul my body and an extra thirty pounds of photo gear up to the summit. Undaunted by the dead end, I reckoned I would simply have to descend the scarp, re-survey the mountain, and find another face to scale. I was on a mission and, motivated by the photograph I saw in my mind, I was determined to finish it. I scoffed for a moment at the thought of the ‘old me,’ and how he would never have climbed a treacherous mountain face. The old me was soft — a musician who sat in a chair all day and designed music software. The ‘new me’ was an outdoor photographer — strong and rugged. I felt almost as if an invisible force was shielding me from any danger that would prevent my capturing that image.

    Ten seconds later, I was in the exact same spot, approximately 100 feet up a vertical mountain face, when I first became aware that my “invisible shield” was a myth. Doggedly determined to find another route up the mountain, I began my descent. But descending a mountain means looking down. And looking down from a tenuous perch upon the face of a cliff gives one a radically altered perspective — one that injects a potent dose of reality directly into the brain. In my case, reality meant that I was 100 feet up a mountain face, held in place by a root no bigger than a hot dog and a toe crevice no larger than its bun. Reality meant that I wasn’t actually a mountain climber. The cameras, lenses, and tripods strapped to my back made me no less ‘soft’ than I was a few months earlier when I was still making crazy synthesizer sounds in a darkened recording studio. Reality also meant that I still needed to find my way down. With my invisible shield shattered and primal motivations supplanting artistic ones, it took me twice as long to go down as it took to go up.

    Once safely at the base, I was surprised to find myself considering another climb. I still hadn’t captured an iconic image of this particular park, and I was certain it lie at the top of this precipice. I was a mere two minutes removed from an hour-long bout with mortal fear, yet the photographic image I’d formed within my head had already rebuilt my invisible shield of invincibility.

    At that moment, a team of real climbers shuffled past. I knew they were real because, instead of cameras, they carried ropes, belts, picks, helmets, and all manner of carabiners. They had just witnessed a portion of my descent. One of the climbers stopped, looked at me, looked at the rock, then looked back at me.

    “You weren’t really climbing that rock all by yourself, were you?” she asked with an expression that registered both admiration and admonishment.

    “It’s OK,” I answered. “I’m a photographer.”

    It was, perhaps, the most utterly ridiculous thing I ever said. But as I reflected on it later, I realized that cameras have an odd psychological effect on me. They have a way of heightening one form of reality, while diminishing others. With my camera in hand, I’m singularly focused on creating the perfect image — one with the potential to entertain, enlighten, inform, or influence those who view it. When I’m on assignment, everything in front of me is filtered through my eyes as if it were already a photograph. Realtime is no longer time at all, but a series of contact sheets from which I’m choosing the images I want to preserve. Is the geometry intriguing? How’s the lighting? Is there energy? Expression? Emotion? It’s not that I actually believe in an invisible shield. It’s that I’m so intent on finding, framing, and capturing the intended images, that non-photographic impulses fail to trigger proper cognition and, subsequently, adequate defenses.

    Because I possess this idiosyncrasy, I’ve promised myself I will never willingly volunteer to photograph violent conflicts (though I suspect this is exactly the sort of characteristic that would make me rather good at it). Of course, this means the Robert Capa Gold Medal Award will never be mine, and that my miniscule chances of joining Magnum Photos become even that much more miniscule. But, for me, decisions involving self-preservation are best made without camera in hand.

    Despite its potentially detrimental effects, the invisible shield is not entirely a negative phenomenon. There are, after all, two types of fears — rational and irrational. If the invisible shield masks a rational fear like, say, climbing mountains without proper training or experience, then that’s an obvious negative. But when the invisible shield obscures irrational fears, the effects are quite beneficial. Once I recognized my tendency to suffer from the invisible shield syndrome, I soon realized I could harness it to my benefit.

    Consider, for example, the discipline of street photography. For me, my shyness was always an impediment to my success. Although I had both the interest and desire, the mere thought of photographing strangers at close range filled me with enough anxiety to keep me off the streets. But once I recognized that I became fearless behind a camera, I had only to wrap its strap around my wrist and rest my finger on its shutter, and all my apprehensions disappeared behind my invisible shield. Although the shield is nothing but an illusion created by an unbalancing of the senses, the benefits are real. That’s because the fear it prevents is, itself, an illusion created by my own diffidence. One artificial aberration masks a second artificial aberration, and I become a healthy and emotionally-balanced street photographer. And here, all this time, I’d been lead to believe that two wrongs don’t make a right.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson 

    If you find these photos enjoyable or the articles beneficial, please consider making a DONATION to this site’s continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site — serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls.

  • Alaskan Cruise Photo Gear Guide

    Alaskan Cruise Photo Gear Guide

    Shoelaces. Room deodorizers. 19th century percolators. Pick any topic you like and, if there are at least two interested parties amongst the world’s 7 billion inhabitants, there’s an internet forum dedicated to discussing it. Within each forum is an assortment of hotheads and trolls, teachers and students, givers, takers, scholars and dabblers. Skim any one of them and you’ll find the dialog as predictable as their cast of characters. You’ll read numerous threads in which belligerent brand-loyalists argue amongst themselves; threads in which the terminally lazy ask basic questions that are answered in Chapter 1 of the owner’s manual; and countless threads started by Googlephobics who post questions identical to ones posted 48 hours earlier.

    Nestled amongst these threads are the inevitable solicitations for equipment recommendations. That shoelace forum will be chock full of posts asking which laces are best for a Himalayan hike, or what length shoelaces to buy for a pair of vintage 1978 high-top Converse All-Stars™. Glance in that room deodorizer forum and discover questions like, “I just broiled some salmon. Should I use a pine or floral scent to mask the odor now emanating from my sofa?”

    In photography forums, these solicitations usually manifest as “which lens” questions. “Which lens should I use for my cousin’s wedding?” or “Which lens should I take on my Alaskan cruise?” Having, myself, received merciful help in a few web programming forums, I felt obligated to return the favor. But, as a programming doofus, I have nothing of value to offer that community. I can only give back by contributing to a subject I know — photography. So I decided to tackle that Alaskan lens question head-on. Making the supreme sacrifice, I booked an Alaskan cruise. It was, after all, the only way I could offer a truly informed opinion.

    Most Alaskan cruises depart from Vancouver, my home. Unencumbered by the restrictions of air travel, I’d be able to board with as much photographic equipment as I could drag along the 10 block walk between my condo and the cruise ship terminal. So I loaded myself down like a rented pack mule, and hauled about a hundred pounds of photo gear onto the Volendam. The purpose? To answer, once and for all, the persistent questions surrounding Alaskan cruises and photo gear selection.

    On this 1-week cruise, I shot in excess of 1500 photos. Upon returning, I immediately trashed over 200 for the usual reasons — poor exposure, poor composition, poor focus, and so on. That left exactly 1300 photos in my Alaskan cruise photo pool — a fairly significant sample size from which to build a statistical model.

    Camera Statistics

    Let’s begin with cameras. I packed three of them: a Leica M8 rangefinder, a Canon 5DmkII SLR, and a Panasonic DMC-G1 micro four-thirds. My pre-cruise plan was simple: I would use the Leica for on-board street-type shots, the 5DmkII for landscapes and wildlife, and the G1 for typical “tourist” shots while walking around towns. Examining the EXIF data for those 1300 shots reveals the following per-camera shot totals:

    • Canon EOS 5DmkII: 590 shots (45%)
    • Panasonic DMC-G1: 513 shots (40%)
    • Leica M8: 197 shots (15%)

    The usage breakdown between the three cameras mirrors my expectations. Because of its bulk, I knew I’d carry the 5D less than the other cameras, but actually take the most shots with it. The reason for this paradox is simple: it was my wildlife camera. Photographing wildlife means firing off a flurry of motor-driven shots whenever something critter-like comes into view. This eats frames in a hurry. In marked contrast to the 5D, I knew I’d carry the lightweight G1 everywhere — whether I planned on using it or not. Even when it wasn’t my primary camera, I’d still sling the G1 over my shoulder in case I needed rapid access to an alternate focal length. Because of the nature of rangefinders, I knew photos taken with the Leica would be more deliberate and, consequently, less plentiful in number (though widely varying in subject).

    Once I set sail, my usage assumptions proved rather accurate. For example, I would have expected to use the Leica for such shots as women dressing and lovers staring into sunsets. And, indeed, I did.

    Similarly, I would expect to (and did) use the 5D to take such photos as the whale triptych that begins this article, and the following two bear photos:

    Since my in-town wanderings were accompanied by the G1, I expected it to record a hodgepodge of subjects, and it dutifully obliged with the following shot of the Flume Trail…

    … and Creek Street (shown below).

    Lens Statistics

    To compliment my choice of cameras and their intended functions, I selected several lenses for this trip. The per-lens shot totals are:

    • Canon EF 300mm f/4L IS: 320 shots (25%)
    • Panasonic 14-45: 298 shots (23%)
    • Panasonic 45-200: 215 shots (17%)
    • Leica 28mm f/2 Summicron: 128 shots (10%)
    • Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L: 127 shots (10%)
    • Canon EF 70-200mm f/4L IS: 115 shots (9%)
    • Voigtlander 35mm f/1.4 Nokton: 69 shot (5%)
    • Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II: 28 shots (2%)

    As is usually the case with statistics, these numbers aren’t as cut and dry as they might appear. Take, for example, the 300mm lens. It was my most frequently used lens, yet it essentially captured only two subjects: bears and whales. If your Alaskan cruise doesn’t involve excursions into the wild, you’ll rarely use a lens of this length.

    There are times, onboard the ship, when you’ll see whales, bears, otters, mountain goats, and other creatures in the distance. On such occasions, I popped a 1.4x teleconverter on my 300mm (giving me a 420mm f/5.6 lens), but the combination still wasn’t long enough to adequately capture wildlife seen from the ship. If your goal is to get quality wildlife shots from the deck of your cruise ship, you better plan on hauling a 600mm lens and a 2x teleconverter with you. Personally, there’s no way I’d bring something that monstrous on a cruise — it would limit my mobility. If you really want to shoot wildlife, book an excursion and bring along a manageable telephoto. Let the guy who didn’t bother to read this article struggle with taking 600mm ‘armchair’ nature shots from the Lido deck. He’ll be miserable.

    You’ll notice, in the previous lens list, that I had one other long lens with me — the Panasonic 45-200. With the G1’s crop factor, this lens acts like a 90-400mm zoom on a full frame 35mm camera. 17% of my shots were taken with this lens but, as always, statistics aren’t telling the whole story. To avoid changing lenses in the field, I always had the G1 with me — equipped with a focal length that would compliment the one on my primary camera’s body. If I carried the Leica, for which I brought all wide lenses, I’d outfit the G1 with the 45-200 to cover the long range. Similarly, if I was packing the 5D with its 17-40 attached then, for the same reason, the G1 was also fit with the 45-200. What these statistics don’t show is that 90 of the 215 shots taken with the 45-200 were taken at the widest setting — 45mm. What this implies is that, although I took 215 shots with the 45-200, it was probably too long for 90 of those shots. In an ideal world, I would likely have chosen a different lens.

    The best way to analyze my lens usage is not to categorize it by lens, but by focal length:

    • Wide Angle: anything shot at less than a 50mm (equivalent) focal length = 516 shots (40%)
    • Mid Range: anything shot between 50mm and 90mm (inclusive) = 274 shots (21%)
    • Telephotos: anything shot over 90mm (equivalent) = 510 shots (39%)

    Again, the telephoto shot total is skewed by the rapid-fire shooting tactics I used while photographing two subjects: bears and whales. Without those two subjects, the vast majority of my shots were taken wider than 50mm.

    Other Gear

    Before this trip, I could find no consensus regarding the question of whether tripods or monopods are useful onboard the ship. So, in order to provide a definitive answer, I packed three support options: my Gitzo carbon-fibre tripod; a carbon-fibre monopod; and a 1 lb sack of lentils.

    I used the tripod for only one shot. I wouldn’t have used it at all but, since I went to a lot of trouble to bring the darn thing, I thought I should at least give it a try. It was a colossal pain in the butt. It hampered my mobility and gave me nothing in return.

    The monopod went on one excursion with me. I used it for five shots. Three of the shots I could have captured without it. Only a pair of waterfall photographs benefited from its use. 2 shots out of 1300 — and neither are exactly gallery quality, as you can see here. In contrast, I took about 20-30 shots with the homemade beanbag, and found it quite useful for evening shots like the one below:

    The beanbag cost me $1 to make, and occupied almost no room in the suitcase. Another advantage of beanbags is you don’t even have to fill them before traveling. Take an empty 1-quart Ziploc™ bag and a small mesh travel sack of equal size. You can buy some lentils when you get to your destination, saving weight during travel. Fill the Ziploc with the lentils, zip it, then put that bag into the mesh travel sack. I have a carabiner attached to the sack, which I hook on the camera strap. This prevents the bag from accidentally slipping off the railing and falling into the ocean.

    As always, I packed a backup battery for every camera — a practice that saved me on two occasions. The Kata raincovers that I brought, which would also save me in the event of a rainstorm, were not needed on this trip.

    What I Should Have Packed

    On several instances, I actually wish I’d brought a flash. I had planned to bring one, but space-constraints forced me to choose between the Kata rain covers and a speedlite. It rains a lot in Alaska and, although it flies in the face of the whole internet strobist craze, I usually try to avoid flash. So I chose to bring the rain covers, meaning I’d need to handle any low-light shots with fast lenses, high ISO speeds, or both. Of the 69 shots taken with the 35mm Voigtlander, the majority were shot, wide open, at f/1.4 and ISO 640. When that combination failed to let in enough light, I used the 50mm f/1.8 on the 5DmkII, which I could shoot at a much higher ISO than the Leica. When that combination failed, I had to resort to the G1’s hideous little on-camera flash. I ended up trashing every one of those flash shots during my first RAW file purge.

    Conclusion

    Leave the tripods and monopods at home. If you’re worried about stabilizing your camera, take a 1-quart Ziploc bag and, when you get to the port city, buy a pound of lentils and fill the bag.

    Unless you’re shooting wildlife, your shots will probably skew toward standard and wider focal lengths. Wildlife excursions will, of course, require the addition of a long lens.

    If you have a fast lens, bring it — it’s dark in the ship’s interior and beautiful on the bow at twilight. If you don’t have a fast lens or a camera with stellar high-ISO performance, you’ll probably want an external flash. If you’re the type who thinks the camera’s built-in flash will work just fine, it’s highly unlikely you’re even reading this article.

    Always take a backup battery, charger, and three times as many flash memory cards as you anticipate needing. If possible, take along some kind of device to which you can offload and backup images. I had my laptop and two small external hard drives. I’ve experienced numerous hard drive failures in my life, so I never trust valuable images to only one drive.

    Ultimately, it doesn’t matter which camera you choose to take — it’s how you use it. Normally, I would have chosen to shoot the following with my Leica, but it wasn’t with me on deck, so I used the 5DmkII.

    Conversely, I would normally choose to take the next photo with the 5D, but the Leica was on my shoulder. Did it really much matter, in either case? No. I got a shot, even if it wasn’t the shot I wanted.

    What about the following two photos? Normally, I would have grabbed the 5DmkII for both of them — but for the top photo, I had only the Leica at hand. And for the bottom photo, I had only the G1:

    Neither is it overly important which lenses you bring. I don’t always reach for the 300mm lens when heading out to take landscapes, but that’s the only lens I had on the bow when these shot opportunities presented themselves:

    This entire article has been a long-winded answer to the popular “what lenses should I take on an Alaskan cruise?” query. If you’ve chosen to “cut to the chase,” and skip reading the bulk of this article, here’s the short answer: Unless you’re shooting for a client with specific needs, it doesn’t matter. There are no bad photo opportunities on an Alaskan cruise. Luck, skill, and planning will all contribute more to your final image than any one piece of photo gear. Your eye will gravitate toward capturing shots that match your gear. Shoot with the camera you know best. Shoot the subjects that interest you most. And enjoy the trip — it’s a vacation, after all.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpsonIf you find these photos enjoyable or the articles beneficial, please consider making a DONATION to this site’s continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site — serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls.
  • Listen to Your Leica

    Listen to Your Leica

    This past Wednesday was hot — so hot that the city of Vancouver broke its all-time temperature record, which had stood since 1960. Wednesday also coincided with the third night of the annual 2-week fireworks competition on English Bay. Although I love this event, I had never considered photographing it. To me, the only thing duller than a fireworks photo is a fireworks video. But that night, blinking away the sweat that had puddled in my eye sockets, I caught a glimpse of the Leica as I headed for the door.

    “Bring me,” it said.

    “Excuse me?”

    “Bring me,” repeated the Leica.

    “But I have no interest in photographing fireworks.”

    “Not even in black and white?” countered the camera.

    “That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

    “Exactly,” replied the Leica, knowing my weakness for incongruity.

    “I’m not too keen on the idea of lugging a tripod down to the beach.”

    “Then don’t.”

    “You want me to photograph fireworks and you don’t want me to use a tripod?”

    “There are a hundred thousand people out there,” argued the Leica. “You need to be mobile. You’re a street photographer.”

    “But it’s pitch black,” I challenged.

    “The fireworks will provide some light.”

    “So let me make sure I have this right. Using black & white, you want me to take street photos on a beach in the middle of the night, hand-holding ridiculously long exposures because a fireworks display is going to be my only source of illumination and I’m not going to have a tripod?”

    “Yup,” said the Leica.

    “I’ll do it!”

    And, with that, my sweat-swathed palm grabbed the camera and headed down to Sunset Beach, well after sunset on a sweltering summer night. Typical of inanimate objects, the Leica had told me what to do, but not how to actually do it.

    With the camera gone mum, I scanned the crowd looking for a shot. Initially, I thought I’d photograph the faces of people as they gazed skyward toward the light, but there simply wasn’t enough of it. And, more importantly, there would be nothing in the photo to convey that the light had come from a fireworks display. I knew then that I’d photograph people from behind — using the fireworks as a source of rim lighting to outline their silhouettes. I also wanted to impart some sense of the setting — the trees, the bay, the ships on the water, and the crowd on the beaches. So I strolled around until I found a nook through which I could frame everything. I held the Leica firmly against my slippery brow and released the lazy shutter, capturing the first official fireworks photo in my 20-year camera-toting career.

    The next day, Thursday, was even hotter — breaking Vancouver’s previous all-time temperature record, which had stood for only 24 hours. I won’t bore you with a recount of my conversation with the coffee machine.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson

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  • Geeking Out with a 50 ‘Cron

    Geeking Out with a 50 ‘Cron

    There are geeks and then there are photo geeks. In the old days, geeks worked in carnivals and were oddly entertaining folks who swallowed swords, hammered spikes into their nostrils, and decapitated chickens and snakes without benefit of a cleaver. The photo geek, by contrast, is not nearly so riveting. In fact, photo geeks are downright dull. They photograph things like test charts and brick walls, and talk about spherical aberrations and aperture diffraction rather than composition, light, and shadow.

    In general, I tend to avoid partaking in the nerdier aspects of photo geekiness. Although I enjoy reading about lens coma and apochromatic lenses as much as the next (obsessive) photographer, I scarcely resort to photographing graphs or grids for the purpose of quantifying camera or lens performance. Instead, I quantify performance by how capably the gear enables me to capture real-world subjects. I choose these subjects for a multitude of reasons, but rarely for the purpose of measuring or calculating subtle optical flaws.

    I only consent to such behavior when these real-world photos display optical aberrations that are either problems to rectify or mysteries to solve. In these instances, I put on the white coat, descend into my metaphorical laboratory, dust off the old slide rule and begin photographing charts, graphs, and dreadfully insipid objects… which brings us to the purpose of today’s article.

    Ever since I began sharing M-mount lenses between the Leica M8 and the Panasonic DMC-G1, I’ve been consciously aware that they perform quite differently on the two cameras. Specifically, photos on the M8 tend to be consistently sharp across the frame, whereas photos from the G1 (when fronted with an adapted M-lens) tend to get rather soft in the corners. Because of the way I use these lenses on the G1, this hasn’t concerned me much. I’ll pop an M-mount lens on a G1 for one of two reasons: either I need faster glass (to compensate for the G1’s rather poor high-ISO performance), or I’m taking advantage of the G1’s 2x crop-factor to ‘convert’ a lens into a mid-range telephoto. In both cases, I tend to shoot subjects that are somewhat centrally-located, and the reduced depth-of-field more than masks any softness in the corners.

    Quite frankly, if it weren’t for that darned internet, I would probably never have fired up the Tesla coil, filled the Erlenmeyer flasks with brightly colored liquids, nor had my assistant fetch me a fresh corpse. I’d happily continue to mount M-lenses on the G1 — mindful of the subject and whether corner softness would negatively impact the photo — never bothering to ‘quantify’ the softness in a lab. However, because of my various blogs about the M8 and the G1, many readers have written me to ask specifically about the differences between these cameras when using M-mount lenses.

    Sean Reid was, to my knowledge, the first to publish the fact that the G1/M-lens combination produced a rather fuzzy periphery. His tests, conducted with a 28mm Summicron, confirmed what I saw in my own images. Crazy as it may seem, I’ve never actually mounted my 28 cron on the G1, but I have mounted both my 35mm and 50mm lenses — and they do display soft edges. But look at the two generic “street portraits” below. Both were taken with my 1991 v5 50mm Summicron lens. For the woman’s photo, the lens was mounted on the M8. For the man’s photo, it was mounted on the G1.

    Both cameras did exactly what I asked them to do, so using real-world images to contrast and compare the two cameras is somewhat futile. So I descended into the laboratory to devise a more controlled test that would tell my readers what they wanted to know.

    The problem with performing a direct comparison is that the M8 and G1 have different crop factors. A 50mm lens mounted on an M8 gives a field of view roughly equivalent to a 66mm lens on a full-frame 35mm camera. That same lens, mounted on a G1, gives a field-of-view roughly equivalent to a 100mm lens. Compounding this difference is the fact that the two cameras have different pixel counts. So, before I could even begin to compare the two cameras directly, I had to partake in some mathletic exercises.

    I positioned the M8 90cm away from a board on which I glued some coins. At that distance, a 50mm lens mounted on a camera with a crop factor of 1.33 yields a 48.72cm horizontal field-of-view. Photos from my M8 are 3916 pixels wide so, for this test, my M8 would capture 80.38 pixels/cm.

    I needed to insure that, when this same lens is mounted on a G1, the coins would appear to be the same size. Since the M8 test yielded 80.38 horizontal pixels/cm, I wanted the same from the G1. Its photos are 4000 pixels wide, which meant I’d need to capture a 49.76cm horizontal field of view. Working backward and factoring in the G1’s 2.00 crop factor, I calculated that the G1 would need to be 139cm from the target in order to capture an image that was dimensionally equivalent to the M8.

    Below are thumbnail views of the uncropped test photos. As you can see, the field of view captured by each camera is nearly identical. On the left is the M8. On the right, the G1:

    For each image, I focused manually on the Loonie in the center. Already I’ve learned something: I had always assumed it was easier to focus the G1 using its magnified focus assist feature than it was to focus the M8. But, as you can see in the following comparisons, I actually obtained slightly better center focus with the M8. I ran each test twice, and these were the best f/2 center focus results from each camera. I then tried to get sharper center performance from the G1, but could not. I can only theorize that the M8’s sensor (with its thin glass coating and missing anti-alias filter) is simply able to resolve analog, unprocessed images better than the G1. And you can’t get more “analog” than an M-mount lens.

    More caveats: I shot the M8 at ISO 320 and the G1 at ISO 400. You can see that, at ISO 400, the G1 is much noisier than the M8. This doesn’t really have any effect on what we’re trying to learn, but it does account for one visible difference between G1 and M8 captures. To minimize camera shake, I used a release cable on the M8 and the timer on the G1. Light came from a big, filtered window directly to the left of the test target — not the most ideal lighting, but identical for the two cameras. Finally, because each camera renders colors a little differently, I desaturated these images so that color variations wouldn’t affect one’s perception of sharpness. I used the same default Lightroom (Camera Raw) settings on all captures.

    Below are the results at f/2. Images from the M8 are on the left, and images from the G1 are on the right. Because the lens behavior was uniformly concentric — affecting all corners equally, I haven’t bothered to show crops from the other corners — just the top left:

    Below are the results at f/2.8. Already I’m seeing quantifiable evidence of why I really like using this lens on the M8 at f/2.8:

    And here are the results at f/4. Note that there seems to be a slight bit of focus shift happening here. Center crops at f/4 aren’t quite as sharp as they were at f/2.8, whereas the corners are a tiny bit sharper:

    Here we see the results at f/5.6. Again mild focus shift is apparent. On the M8, the corner is decidedly sharper than the center. On the G1, which suffers from soft corners, the center softness and edge softness are now nearly identical.

    At f/8, depth of field begins to obscure the focus shift differentials. However, we can still see that the M8 corner image is slightly sharper than the center, whereas the G1’s corner image is about equally as soft as its center. For the G1 tests, I focused the 50mm lens only once at f/2 — this was to insure any focus shift issues that existed on the M8 would be duplicated on the G1. In reality, one is most likely to focus a G1-mounted lens at the selected aperture (unless it’s too dark).

    Obviously, when my 50mm Summicron is mounted on a DMC-G1, the corners are softened across all apertures. At f/2 – f/4 this is extremely apparent. On this test it isn’t as apparent at f/5.6 or f/8… until you consider that this lens has mild focus shift issues and, as such, one would expect the corners to be sharper than the center at those apertures.

    What’s my conclusion? The plain and simple truth is that the M8’s sensor was designed for M-mount lenses; the Micro Four-Thirds (MFT) sensor was not. MFT cannot do justice to M-class glass. MFT really comes into its own when you use dedicated MFT lenses, since their aberrations are automatically corrected within the camera’s software. The snag, of course, is the paucity of MFT lens offerings. Personally, I’ve only used the G1’s 14-45 MFT kit lens, but I find its renderings too clinical for many of my images. It’s like the visual equivalent of Autotune™, which singers use to correct pitch errors. The problem with Autotune™ (to my ears) is that removing all of a singer’s pitch variations also removes all of the singer’s soul. I’d rather have soul than perfection, so I often choose to mount M-lenses on my G1. Your needs and aesthetics may differ. If edge-to-edge sharpness is important to your photography, you probably won’t be happy buying M-lenses to mount on your MFT camera. Also, if you already own a collection of M-lenses and are dying to use them on a digital body, you’ll be much happier spending a few extra bucks on a used Leica M8 instead of a new MFT body. If, like me, you frequently carry around both an M8 and a G1, then its hard to beat the convenience of having two “looks” for the price of one lens.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson

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  • Torment of the Innocuous Query

    Torment of the Innocuous Query

    “What do you photograph?”

    Inevitably, when someone discovers that I’m a photographer, this is their Pavlovian response. It’s a question framed in an expression of utmost earnestness — as if they were asking a medical doctor to state his specialty, or an actor to enumerate the roles they had played. I’ve heard other photographers respond to this inquiry without missing a beat. “Weddings,” they answer. Or, “I’m a corporate photographer.” “I shoot sports,” say others. “Wildlife!”

    How do they do this? How do they answer this question so effortlessly? How does anybody photograph only one thing? Photographers even ask this question of each other. If you respond with an answer that’s too broad, or name even more than a single discipline, you’re labelled a dilettante.

    “What do you photograph?”

    My heart sinks. I know how to answer the question correctly, but I haven’t the correct answer. I photograph what fascinates me; what amuses me; what saddens me. I photograph what I find poignant, aesthetic, horrifying, delightful, beautiful, inspiring, strange, ironic, truthful, exotic, funny, or revealing.

    If I’m entertained by human expression, I’ll photograph it. But I don’t label myself a ‘portrait photographer.’

    If I see a levitating dog, I’ll photograph it. But I’m not a ‘pet photographer.’

    A Device for Levitation

    If I find a zen-like tranquility in an everyday object, I’ll photograph it. But I’d never call myself a ‘fine arts photographer.’

    “What do you photograph?”

    It’s a question the inquisitor wants answered as succinctly as possible. And, for this reason, it’s a question I’ve never answered adequately. “I like to photograph people,” I’ve said on numerous occasions and to unsatisfactory result. It’s certainly true. I do enjoy photographing people — but not to the exclusion of everything else. And how can I reconcile this answer with the fact that a landscape assignment has, to date, been my favorite? I can’t. So why must I declare a specialty when I’ve delivered quality work across many disciplines and enjoyed them all?

    “What do you photograph?”

    It’s a very specific question, and that question is not “what do you like to photograph?” The question is “what do you photograph?” The implicit meaning of this is, “As a professional, you must have a narrow specialty. What is it?” That’s why an answer as banal as “I like to photograph people,” doesn’t cut it. “Photographing people” is not a job. Wedding photography is a job. Fashion photography is a job. Taking snapshots of babies at Walmart is a job. So when people ask this question, they’re really asking, “Where does the money come from?”

    For this reason, I’ve sometimes heard myself answer the question with an even less satisfying response: “I’ll photograph anything my clients ask for.” It’s an answer that directly and truthfully addresses the real question behind the question. Indeed, I will photograph anything people will pay me to photograph. I need to earn a living and, if at all possible, I’d like to earn it with a camera. If a cooking magazine hired me, full-time, to photograph culinary creations for their monthly publications, I would give them the best photographs money could buy. But I still wouldn’t answer, “I’m a food photographer.”

    “What do you photograph?”

    It’s a question that, if answered to the satisfaction of the inquisitor, would be void of any and all truth. When my camera is in my hand, I have a heightened awareness. I do not shut myself off from anything. I do not narrow my vision to a single discipline. I photograph with my eyes wide open. I am a hunter — hyper-sensitive to geometry and motion, passion and emotion. I see everything… but I can’t photograph everything I see. I can only photograph the smallest subset of the images that bombard me. So the things I choose to photograph are dictated by my own personal principles, emotions, and ideals.

    “What do you photograph?”

    My soul.

    Although I will never dare utter such an affected response to a casual acquaintance, potential employer or industry peer, it is the most honest and complete answer of all. It is, ultimately, what every true photographer photographs, because the photographer’s soul dictates where the lens points, how its settings are chosen, and when the shutter is released.

    People in some cultures claim that, with each photo taken of them, they lose a little piece of their soul. But, in actuality, the subject’s soul remains intact. It only seems diminished because it’s been diluted by the addition of the photographer’s soul. It is the photographer who determines the exact moment of capture — the exact expression. And, by the choices they make, photographers impose some of their own biases, beliefs and soul onto the subject.

    It matters not whether a photographer is paid to shoot animal, vegetable, or mineral. These are just ‘things’ that a photographer shoots. It matters not whether a photo is for a news magazine, a corporate website, or the art gallery. These are just ‘clients’ for whom a photographer shoots. To define your photography by aligning it with a specific ‘thing’ or a ‘client’ seems, to me, rather soulless.

    “What do you photograph?”

    It’s a question for which I can write an entire essay for an answer, yet will never be capable of answering to the satisfaction of those who ask it.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson

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  • Communicating Discourse

    Communicating Discourse

    Thursday morning began as every morning begins — I awoke in a strange room, unaware of who I am or how I arrived there. Through perseverance of will, I began to piece together certain clues — eventually determining that this was my own bedroom in my own condo, and that I was exactly the same guy I was yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that. By rote of muscle memory, I stumbled into the kitchen, ground the coffee beans, filled the Technivorm with fresh water, and switched it on — fixated on each drip that filled the “Carafe Of Life” with the rich brown molecules demanded by the voices in my head. After consuming the first bucket of beverage, I turned to the Macintosh to see what the morning email brought. And that’s where Thursday morning diverged from other mornings.

    My inbox contained a request to photograph an event that would begin in an hour and a half. The freshly caffeinated synapses in my mind were now easily capable of performing the math. “Let’s see,” I thought. “Thirty minutes to shave, shower and dress. Plus thirty minutes to walk to the event. Factor in an arrival time fifteen minutes before the event to discuss, exactly, what the client requires. Carry the three and multiply by the square root of seven and… I have exactly 15 minutes to gather and pack my camera gear!”

    Now fueled by a potent mixture of both caffeine and adrenaline, I hurriedly grabbed a backpack. I knew nothing about what I would be photographing nor the conditions under which the shoot would occur. So I tossed in a heap of seemingly disparate gear — a wide lens, a portrait lens, a long lens, a couple camera bodies, a flash, a stand, a shoot-through umbrella, and a bevy of storage cards, batteries, gels, filters, and assorted other bits.

    Upon arriving at the event, I quickly discovered I could have left the flash equipment at home. The meeting room’s ceiling floated 10 meters above my head, effectively eliminating it as a source of bounce. The room’s walls were swathed in an ostentatious yellowy paper that cast a sickly beige hue upon every object in the room. To eliminate the tawny tint, I would need to blast my victims… err, I mean “subjects,” with quasi-nuclear flash — effectively killing any and all ambient light. Not only would that be intrusive to the conference, but it would violate my own aesthetic values. So the flash stayed in the bag.

    There were numerous round tables, set for dining, and spread throughout the room. That fact — plus the long white table adorned with sandwiches, salads, soup, and fruits — were my first hints that this was a luncheon. The final piece of evidence came from the event planner himself who, having spotted me crouched in a corner, said “we’ll be serving lunch.” Thus ferreted out of my hiding place, I could no longer entertain thoughts of escape. So I asked him what type of event this would be, and what type of shots he’d like. He said it was an exchange of ideas — people talking about the problems in their particular industry and how they go about solving them.

    Hmm. So my assignment is to photograph “people exchanging ideas?” No problem. I can wing this.

    My first thought was to try shooting wide — including as many participants as possible in the frame. It wasn’t a bad concept conceptually, but there was a problem with its execution. Since this was a lunch event, someone in the discussion group would inevitably be eating. Group photographs in which at least one person is chewing do not, ultimately, say “discourse.”

    So I tried another tactic: I would frame tightly either on someone speaking or on someone listening. Filling the frame with a single person would prevent me from accidentally photographing somebody in mid-chew. This worked, but it also didn’t really say “discourse.” After all, a photo of someone talking (or listening) doesn’t tell the whole story — only half. You can see this in the two photos shown here — they might work as candid ‘portraits,’ but they don’t suggest an exchange of information.

    So I started shooting people in profile, pulling back to the point where I could see two conversationalists in the frame. I now had a photo that said “discourse,” but it was lacking something. Specifically, shooting conversations in profile obscured the passion and intensity of the participants. It also disconnected the viewer from the conversation, as if one were eavesdropping on a discussion rather than participating in it.

    And that’s when it hit me: Use a narrow depth-of-field, and shoot one of the participants directly — but make sure to include at least a piece of the other participant(s). In this way, I could show the earnestness of either the speaker or listener, but still convey they’re involved in a discourse with one or more people. There is no need to actually focus on the features of any secondary participants, nor is there any actual need to show their faces — they serve merely to indicate that a conversation is occurring. Below are just a couple of examples:

    The idea worked perfectly. I captured a series of photos that expressed “people exchanging ideas,” which is exactly what the event organizer had hoped to see. I returned home that afternoon, processed several of the images, and went to bed satisfied with my abilities as a photographer — happy that my reactive method of photography had succeeded once more.

    On Friday morning, I again awoke in a strange room, unaware of who I am or how I arrived there…

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson

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  • The M8ing Ritual (Part 3)

    The M8ing Ritual (Part 3)

    In part 1 of this series, I discussed why an M8 was necessary for my photographic techniques, and how I came to secure one. In part 2, I discussed the camera’s ergonomic factors, shutter volume, and sociological impact on today’s streets. In other words, I’ve discussed everything except what matters most — image quality. So let’s get down to it.

    The Sound of a Photograph

    It’s a little known fact that photographs make sound. A print reflects visible light, which has a frequency that ranges from 384 to 769 terahertz. Audible sound, by contrast, has a much lower frequency — ranging from 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz. Because a photograph is physically unable to vibrate with a force capable of propagating audible waves, it can’t be heard directly. Instead, its sound is modulated by the visible light’s high-frequency carrier signal. Note that this is exactly the same principle on which radio broadcasts work. You can’t hear your favorite FM station by listening directly to the high frequency carrier waves that float through the air  — you need a radio to demodulate the content and extract it from the carrier band. The same is true with photographs. You can’t hear the photograph by listening to the images — you need a human being to demodulate the audible content from the carrier wave. In this case, the image comes into the eye, where the brain demodulates the signal, and the mouth then articulates the sound of the photograph.

    Look, for example, at one of your worst photographs and a “pfft” sound escapes from your mouth. This is the sound of that photo. Glance at a mediocre image and listen carefully as a quiet “meh” falls from your lips. Intriguing images tend to make “hmmmm!” sounds of varying intensity.

    Why is this important? Because I have discovered that RAW image files from the Leica M8 make a specific sound — and that sound is “whoah!” This sound, though not unique to M8 photographs, is unique to unprocessed digital negatives. Generally, when a photograph possesses the “whoah!” sound, it’s been carefully honed via a skillful application of Photoshop post-processing techniques. To hear an unprocessed image make this sound is remarkable.

    Prior to getting the M8, I could easily find all my post-processed images in an Adobe Lightroom gallery — they simply leapt from the screen — a handful of “whoahs” in a symphony of lesser sounds. There was no need to look at file names or metadata. The post-processed images had a vibrance and energy about them that is simply missing from unprocessed RAW captures. Once the M8 arrived, I could no longer quickly distinguish the processed images from the unprocessed M8 RAW files — they both said “whoah!“

    Cartier-Bresson on Nonlinear Differential Equations

    The M8 delivers stellar “negatives.” I didn’t expect this. Charts and graphs and mathematics all indicate that, ultimately, the RAW output from a Leica M8 is commensurate with an old Canon 20D. Measurements and calculations of a camera’s color sensitivity, tonal range, signal-to-noise ratio, and ISO sensitivity are all readily found on the internet. All are earnest attempts to scientifically quantify theoretical performance levels for different cameras. Fortunately, I once owned a Canon 20D, and still have hundreds of its better photos in my Lightroom library. In spite of their identical scientific measurements, there is not the slightest similarity between the 20D’s RAW files and those from the Leica. The differences between images from the 20D and those from the M8 are every bit as apparent as those between a point-and-shoot and my Canon 5DmkII. Prior to owning an M8, I had a modicum of faith in such camera specifications. I now believe them to be pure, unadulterated crap. If specs had any significant meaning, Henri Cartier-Bresson would have carried an HP Scientific Calculator rather than a Leica rangefinder.

    While the sensor in a 20D and the sensor in an M8 might both be capable of recording images of equal fidelity, the specs don’t address the fact that the M8 delivers a higher quality image to that sensor. Imagine, if you will, two identically specified audio recorders. One is placed inside a concert hall, and the other out on the street. The recording mechanisms may be identical, but the quality of the music recorded inside the concert hall will far exceed the quality of the recording made outside. There are, I believe, several reasons why shooting with an M8 is like being inside that concert hall.

    First, the M8 lacks an anti-aliasing filter. Leica was initially ridiculed for this decision because everyone assumed you had to put an anti-aliasing filter on a digital camera. The main reason cameras have these filters is to prevent moire patterns from appearing in photographs. And how does the anti-aliasing filter reduce these moire patterns? By softening and blurring the image so the patterns are no longer visible. The problem, obviously, is that the typical digital camera softens every image you capture, on the off-chance you might inadvertently capture a moire pattern. It’s like drinking Ipecac Syrup every day, just in case you ingest some harmful poison. When used with high quality lenses, the increased image sharpness and clarity from the M8 is remarkable — like the difference between a nearsighted person seeing the world with and without glasses. The potential trade-off, of course, is the possibility that moire patterns will creep into your photos. But after looking at over 500 M8 captures in Lightroom, I have yet to see a single moire pattern in a rendered image — the mathematical anti-aliasing routines included in Lightroom are obviously doing their job effectively, and without obfuscating image detail.

    Second, in order to further maximize sharpness and contrast, Leica built the M8 with an unusually thin glass cover over the sensor. The tradeoff here is an increased sensitivity to infrared light. When shooting for black & white, the increased IR responsiveness is not a problem and, in some instances, may be beneficial. But if your final image is destined for color, it does necessitate you use an IR-cut filter on your lens. When used on wide angle lenses, IR-cut filters also cause red vignetting (manifesting as cyan-colored corners), which requires software correction. If you’re using coded Leica lenses, these corrections are applied automatically in-camera. If you’re not using coded Leica lenses, a program called “Cornerfix” yields excellent results. The M8’s infrared controversy, workarounds, and workflow contortions are well-documented, so I won’t discuss them further. Suffice to say, whether you think it’s for better or worse, Leica’s decision to fit the M8 with such a thin sensor covering has helped squeeze even more magic out of those magnificent M-mount lenses.

    Third, and speaking of magnificent M-mount lenses, I’ve been shooting almost exclusively with the Leica 28mm f/2 Summicron. A camera can only be as good as the lens you mount on it, and the Summicron is exceptional. With the M8’s crop-factor, this lens operates like a 35mm lens on a full-frame 35mm SLR. To date, the best 35mm lens I’ve used is the Canon EF 35mm f/1.4L. It’s a highly-respected industry standard that I, myself, rated 9 out of a possible 10. All I can say is, if that Canon is a 9, then the Leica 28mm f/2 Summicron is a 14. It’s extraordinary. Of all the 35mm format camera/lens combinations I’ve used, only my Canon 135mm f/2L on a full-frame SLR has delivered RAW images of such quality.

    Fourth, charts and graphs and mathematics are completely inept at quantifying aesthetic pleasure. Stereo manufacturers, for example, try to build amplifiers with the lowest harmonic distortion readings possible. Yet many audiophiles prefer tube amplifiers — precisely because their analog harmonic distortion is actually more pleasing to the ear. What good is a spec if it’s irrelevant? Look no further than the silliness of the megapixel specification. We all know it’s possible to place so many megapixels on a sensor that image quality begins to degrade. Yet many people (consumers, mostly) use megapixel comparisons to determine which camera is ‘better.’ No doubt, if one camera contained 20 megapixels and another contained 15, the average consumer would conclude the 20 megapixel model would produce a better image. But what if the 15 megapixel camera sported a full-frame 35mm sensor, while the 20 megapixel model was a pocket camera with a typical 6mm sensor? Assuming both cameras were competently engineered, the 15 megapixel camera, with a sensor 30x larger than the pocket camera, would utterly annihilate the 20 megapixel model. Even Mr. Magoo would see the difference.

    Assessing the M8 by its specifications is like evaluating Yosemite by its travel brochures. In both cases you’ll miss the point — entirely. The Leica appealed to me because its handling and ergonomics were more conducive to the sort of quick, candid shooting I wanted to perform. That was the bait. But what set the hook and reeled me in was the image quality. Make some room in the creel — Leica’s bagged another convert.

    8-Bit RAW?!

    Leica usage, amongst non-Leica users, is considered a ‘cult.’ But, I assure you, I own no hooded black robes. I don’t chant incantations when choosing an aperture setting, and the camera doesn’t require a secret password before it releases the shutter. My mind, my eye, and my techniques are mine — not the camera’s. I am not a slave to the Leica zeitgeist — the Leica is a slave to mine. The images I choose to capture are not determined by Leica, they’re determined by me. And the M8 is the tool that best-enables me to capture these images.

    Besides, would cultists dare question their supreme ruler? M-series aficionados have, for nearly 60 years, vociferously challenged many of Leica’s conservative and downright quirky design decisions. As part of a new generation of Leica shooters, I have my own laundry list of complaints, and none is more irksome than their decision to use 8-bit RAW files.

    Choosing to output 8-bit RAW files is, without a doubt, the single dumbest decision Leica made in regards to the M8. Much dumber than their decision to outfit the M8 with the traditional and hopelessly anachronistic baseplate. More foolish, too, than the controversial decision to use a thin IR-shield over the sensor, which necessitates the use of IR-cut filters and software vignetting correction. Those decisions are annoying but surmountable. 8-bit RAW files, in contrast, have no work-around. They simply limit what a photographer can accomplish with an image.

    Most digital cameras give you RAW files with 12-bits of data recorded in each color channel. The M8 gives you RAW files with 8-bits of data. Since I’m already on-record as stating that M8 RAW files are more visually appealing than those from other cameras, why does this matter? Because it affects what you can do with an image in post-processing. Leica lenses and the M8 body capture images of superb quality. The M8 records these images at a higher bit-rate, then downsamples them to 8-bits in the final RAW file. Leica’s rationalization is that there is no discernible difference between the captured image quality and the 8-bit output and, thus, decided that photographers would prefer to have smaller file sizes.

    I have no doubt that Leica’s downsampling algorithms create an image perceptually indistinguishable from the one captured. My problem is that, in modern photography, the digital negative is only a starting point — it’s not the final destination. By giving us files with only 8-bits per channel, the M8’s digital negatives are less forgiving of post-processing. 12-bit files have 4096 variations between the lightest and darkest tone in each of the three color channels. 8-bit files have only 256 variations. Although good conversion algorithms can create a reduced tonal map that makes a downsampled image visually indistinguishable from the original, those images become “set in stone.” When you start to push pixels around—changing their tonal relationships—the images begin to deteriorate. Because of the coarseness in 8-bit tonal values, the creaminess of the Leica image becomes ragged and mottled when subjected to anything more than subtle post-processing. This is madness. Leica has designed lenses and a camera that can capture images of impeccable quality. They then, essentially, throw away all the perceptually ‘unneeded’ bits, and give us a downsampled version that cannot be processed without visible degradation. Why? SD cards are ridiculously inexpensive. The M8 even supports SDHC cards, whose higher capacity would easily store hundreds of full-size, 12-bit RAW files on a single, thumbnail-sized card. From my perspective, there is absolutely no need to downsample the image. The camera is capturing images at a higher bit-depth, but the internal software reduces that depth before it’s recorded to the card. Why can’t Leica recognize that, in 2009, there is no longer a need for these smaller RAW files? Why don’t they recognize that photographers will post-process digital images the same way they manipulated prints in a darkroom? Why has Leica continued to update the camera’s firmware without ever issuing an update that gives photographers access to the 12-bit captures? It’s infuriating. Setting aside my modesty temporarily, I’ll cop to the fact that my post-processing skills are exemplary. The M8’s image quality is astonishing. Together, we could create some stunning photographs. But Leica’s decision to create 8-bit RAW files prevents this synergy from forming and means, for serious work, I must still turn to the 5DmkII — a camera that allows its raw files to be manipulated in any manner I see fit.

    Come on, Leica. If you only do one other thing with the M8 series, give us 12-bit RAW files!

    Misplacing my Discombobulation

    When I decided to purchase the M8, I expected to dedicate an entire blog entry to my problems and frustrations with adapting to the rangefinder. For the last 20 years, I’ve been staring through the barrel of my lenses — able to frame images precisely, preview depth-of-field effects, and accurately visualize the unique spatial perspective of each lens. Surely, the loss of these features would be problematic, right? Wrong.

    I took to the rangefinder like bacon to eggs. It turns out that I don’t need to preview an image’s depth of field — my years of experience have taught me exactly what to expect from each focal length and each aperture. I can see depth-of-field in my mind — I don’t require the camera to show me, and I don’t miss looking through a lens. I know, instinctively, how various focal lengths will affect perspective, and I can frame and shoot accordingly. Honestly, if you really understand photography, then the things a rangefinder doesn’t tell you are the things you already know. You will miss nothing. If, however, your photographic education is somewhat spotty, an SLR is a more forgiving and helpful teacher.

    My rangefinder experiences have been nothing short of pure joy. I had but one bad habit to correct — a persistent desire to focus perfectly. When you peer through a rangefinder, you’ll see a center spot with a split image — half the image comes through the viewfinder on the left. The other half comes from a different viewfinder on the opposite side of the lens. When you turn the focus ring on the lens, the two images converge or diverge accordingly. When an object is in perfect focus, the two images align. My problem was that, instinctively, I wanted the two images to be in precise alignment before shooting. Intellectually, I knew that wider focal lengths and narrower apertures created an extensive depth-of-field that made it pointless to obsess over accurate focus. But, because the M8 is designed for instinctual photography, the instinctual half of my brain was initially in control of the camera’s functions — causing me to be overly slow and conservative when focusing.  Eventually, my intellectual brain successfully trained my instinctual brain to ease-up on its precise focus fixation, and accept a variable amount of slop as dictated by the current focal length and aperture.

    Conclusion

    We live in an era where a preponderance of popular music is assembled from prefabricated audio loops rather than from the blood, sweat and creativity of instrumentalists. So it should come as no surprise that rangefinder cameras have fallen from favor. Their usage — like violins, trumpets or pianos — requires a commitment to study and practice. But “study” and “practice” are antonyms for “instant gratification,” which is what pumps the pulses of today’s society. Modern, auto-everything cameras have as much in common with the Leica M-series as the Guitar Hero™ game has with a Fender Telecaster™. For many, these blunt instruments of passionless photography rise to near-perfection when bundled with a cellphone.

    But for those to whom photography is a lifelong craft, there is no such thing as a ‘perfect camera,” and no single camera can do everything a photographer needs it to do. Wildlife and sports photographers, in particular, would find the Leica M8 utterly useless. But if you’re a photographer who documents everyday life, the M8 is as close to perfect as you can currently get. Supplementing the M8 with a Panasonic G1 brings you that much closer — each camera compliments the other’s weaknesses. Yet the two sit, side-by-side, in a bag much smaller than the one that carries your big, bulky dSLR.

    For the first time since being infected by the dreaded “street shooting bug,” I am thoroughly happy with my gear. I feel liberated and I feel free.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson

    ABOUT THESE PHOTOS: All images were shot using the Leica M8 and a 28mm Summicron lens.

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  • The M8ing Ritual (Part 2)

    The M8ing Ritual (Part 2)

    In part 1 of this series, I recounted my reasons for purchasing a Leica M8, and how a series of fortuitous events enabled this to happen. At the time I made this purchase, the original M8 had been on the market for two and a half years — an eon in digital photography terms. Graduates from the school of “latest is greatest” will deem this a curious purchase decision, but it has several advantages. First, Leica has now had 30 months to work the kinks out of the system — and there were a lot of kinks. Second, the many experienced rangefinder shooters who boldly blazed the digital Leica trail have kindly left us latecomers with a wealth of maps and detours around the camera’s many quirks and curiosities. Third, it’s the only way a mortal photographer of meager means can afford entry.

    So, for the M8-curious, what wisdom can I possibly impart that was not previously disclosed by the many sage rangefinder shooters before me? Perspective. The fact that I am not an experienced rangefinder shooter, but a born and bread SLR-slinger, affords me a completely different vantage point from which to assess the M8 and its role in modern photography. Since the majority of M8 reports were penned by experienced rangefinder photographers, they’re frequently skewed toward discussing the differences between the M8 and the film-based rangefinders that preceded it. It’s all good stuff — if you’re also a long-time rangefinder shooter. But what if you’re not? What if you’re one of the crazy ones that, after shooting SLR’s for 20 years, suddenly decide you want to hand over a sizable chunk of your photography technique to the rangefinder — a system with which you’ve had only limited experience? Now where’s your guidance? That’s why I’m here.

    So to all the rangefinder veterans who, while reading this report, will likely snicker at the blatant obviousness of my findings, I apologize. At least you now have another supporter to help shore up your depleted numbers. And, to all the SLR shooters who are blithely unaware of rangefinder cameras or techniques, let this report be a guide in your own quest to determine whether or not a rangefinder deserves a place amongst your SLRs.

    First Physical Impressions

    My first impression, upon receiving my ‘beater’ M8, was to think popflash.com mailed me the wrong one. The camera looked flawless. It was ding-free and showed no obvious signs of wear, even under intense scrutiny. I’ve unsealed brand new products from factory packages that don’t look this good. I was mentally self-prepared to receive a camera that had doubled as someone’s hammer. Instead, I got something that looked barely touched.

    Though my M8 doesn’t appear to have seen duty as a hammer, that’s not necessarily indicative that it hasn’t. The camera feels like a precision-forged, solid slab of industrial-grade carbon steel. I get the sense that a little medium-duty household hammering wouldn’t leave a mark. Compared to the M8, my Canon 5D mkII feels like it’s assembled from Tupperware™. There is no doubt, should I ever be called upon to photograph the armageddon, that I’ll grab the Leica — it and cockroaches will be all that endure.

    Of course, such robust construction exacts more than a financial price. In this case, the cost is weight. When you reach for the M8, your natural tendency is to pinch a corner between your thumb and forefinger and exert a gentle lifting force. The camera just laughs. If you want to lift this sucker, you better wrap your whole hand around it, bend your knees, exhale firmly, and jerk upward in a forceful but fluid motion. OK, perhaps I’m exaggerating a little, but the Leica is heavier than you expect.

    Curiously, the substantial weight you feel when lifting an M8 from a table becomes nearly non-existent when it’s slung over your shoulder. Though this appears to violate the laws of physics it is, in fact, an illusion of ergonomics. The M8 is a superbly balanced camera. When you lift an M8 by the strap, it hangs plumb — tilting neither up nor down, left nor right. This means, when draped across your body, the M8 simply melds to it. For me, it’s like having an extra super-strength bionic rib in my chest — it becomes a part of my body, not something hanging off of it. When you walk, the M8’s mass dampens any bouncing motion. Also, since the M8 always sits flat against your body, there’s none of the swinging and twisting motion you get from an SLR, which inevitably hangs cockeyed due to the exceedingly heavy and unbalanced lenses. Similarly, when you lift the M8 to your eye and frame a shot, the camera provides no resistance — only a well-balanced damping effect and steadiness in the hand.

    The ergonomic factors that work with the M8 when you wear it on your body are the same factors that work against it when you lift it off the table. The M8 is an item of symmetry. It has no bulbous curves around which to wrap your right palm. It has no molded finger indents, no thumb rests, and no organic shaping of any kind. It’s a rectangle with a tube sticking out the front. The M8 offers the user no obvious place to grab it and lift. Unless you’re willing to put big greasy fingerprints on the LCD, viewfinder and distance meter window, the M8 encourages you (as I described previously), to grab it by “pinching a corner between your thumb and forefinger.” When lifted in this manner, the camera might as well be a 1961 Buick LeSabre.

    All this talk about mass and heft and apparent weight might seem aimlessly trite, but there’s a point — particularly if, like me, you’re an SLR shooter that’s contemplating an M8. The first few times I felt tempted enough to fondle the M8 in camera shops, the experience left me cold. That’s because one of my major goals was to eliminate the bulkiness of the SLR. But when lifted, fingered, and examined in a camera store, the M8’s utilitarian body shape makes the camera seem exceedingly heavy and clumsy to hold. It’s only when strapped to one’s body and lifted, from there to the eye, that the M8 transforms into a featherweight. For over a year, my camera-store experiences actually had a negative impact on my decision to purchase an M8. It was only after I took the trouble to attach a strap and feel how the camera sat against my body, that I “got” it.

    Because the M8 was never designed to be a one-handed camera, Leica and numerous third-party developers have created all manner of add-on ergonomic doo-dads. You can purchase cases with built-in ‘bumps’ with which you can better grab the camera. Leica offers a replaceable bottom plate with a built-in ‘tube’ that extends vertically up the right-face of the camera, giving the fingers of your right-hand something to grab onto. Both of these items are unnecessary if you plan to wear the M8 but, if you choose to slip on a wrist strap and carry it with one hand, they’ll prove invaluable. Personally, I’d be fine resting my four fingers on the camera’s flat front edge if there was something, instead, for my thumb to grip on the camera’s back. Fortunately, Tim Isaac makes just such a product and, eventually, this may be the first ergonomic add-on to adorn my M8. But I plan to shoot judiciously with the camera as-is before deciding to accessorize it in any way.

    KaTHUNK Zawip

    When graphic designers create page layouts, they use strings of nonsensical characters to help them visualize how the actual text will look. This is called greeking and, contrary to appearances, it is not mistakenly responsible for the title of this section. No, kaTHUNK zawip is really a German term, which comes from the Solms region and means, literally, “the sound of an M8 shutter release.”

    To those of us who heard the legendary tales of whisper-like Leica shutters, the M8’s kaTHUNK zawip comes as quite a shock. This thing is loud. Not only is it louder than the DMC-G1, which I thought was too loud, but it’s even louder than my 5D mkII. Nowhere, in all my preliminary research, had I unearthed this particular fact. Now, I’m fully aware that Leica traditionalists were bemoaning the M8’s shutter volume, but I thought, “So what. It’s still gotta be quieter than my SLR.” Nope. It’s not. All you SLR-shooters who think the legendary Leica ‘discreetness’ extends into the audible realm are, like me, mistaken. If capturing the shot requires maximum auditory discretion, use one of the many point-and-shoot cameras that allows for totally silent operation.

    Leica, to their credit, heard the customer complaints and designed a completely different shutter for the M8.2. As with all the M8.2 improvements, Leica (also to their credit) offers M8 owners the option to upgrade their old M8 shutter to the new, quieter version. To Leica’s ultimate discredit, however, this shutter upgrade costs as much as my entire ‘beater’ M8. Obviously, I won’t be replacing the shutter.

    Short of wrapping the camera in a blanket, there’s little that can be done. In March of 2009, Leica released firmware version 2.004, which adds the M8.2’s so-called “discreet” shutter function to the M8. This function, essentially, allows you to separate the zawip from the kaTHUNK. The kaTHUNK sound comes from the opening and closing of the shutter. The zawip sound comes from its re-cocking. In the film days, you would re-cock the shutter manually, meaning you could choose to make that sound at a more appropriate time. With version 2.004’s discreet shutter option enabled, pressing the shutter button still takes a picture with a resounding kaTHUNK, but the shutter re-cocking and corresponding zawip sound will not occur until you release the shutter button. In theory, this lets you snap a shot, hold the shutter button in, walk away, and then release the shutter button — separating the zawip from the kaTHUNK.

    Given the fact that, on my Canon 5D, the re-cocking sound is louder than the shutter release, I thought the new Leica ‘discreet’ mode would be more useful than it is. Unfortunately, unlike the 5D, the M8’s kaTHUNK shutter release is acutely louder than the re-cocking sound. That said, I’ve still chosen to use the new discreet shutter mode for two very subtle reasons: First, the zawip sound is much higher pitched than the kaTHUNK. As such, even though it’s quieter, it tends to cut through the din of a noisy environment a bit more that its volume would indicate. Second, since we’ve all grown up in the presence of cameras, we’ve come to expect them to emit the two-part sound. So, when the kaTHUNK catches someone’s attention, they subconsciously think “did I just hear a camera click?” When the ear doesn’t receive the corresponding zawip sound, the brain thinks, “No, I must have been mistaken.” Like I said, it’s subtle… but its better than nothing, and it’s much more practical than a blanket.

    As I gain more hands-on experience with the M8, I’ll be able to determine whether or not the excessive shutter volume is as detrimental as I fear. In my first few preliminary forays onto the street, I’m finding that the kaTHUNK’s lower pitch is a bit more masked by environmental sounds than the higher-pitched 5D. At least I know, should the volume of the M8’s shutter ever get me into hot water, the camera itself will be a most effective weapon of self-defence.

    Social Experimentation

    Though I felt compelled to warn fellow SLR-slingers that the M8’s shutter release affords no more furtiveness than a Canon 5D mkII, audible stealthiness takes a back-seat to physical stealthiness. After all, as long as you can run fast enough, it’s far better to give yourself away after you’ve taken a photo than before. If people notice your camera before you get your shot, then you’re not getting it. And this is where the M8 really excels.

    I think, in order to pursue street photography, you need to have an interest in people, and in their interactions with each other and with the world around them. Effectively, this makes all us street guys amateur sociologists and, as such, I’m not beyond conducting a few social experiments of my own.

    One of my more important experiments involves watching how people in crowds respond to different types of cameras.

    SLRs always attract attention. Be it a furtive glance or an open-mouthed gawk, the SLR gets noticed. It’ll attract the watchful eye of a protective mother, the calculating eye of an opportunistic thief, and the competitive eye of every gadget geek. The bigger the lens, the more you’re noticed. And don’t even get me started on white lenses. They have an uncanny knack, not just of getting noticed, but of eliciting such enlightened comments as “betcha that thing takes really good pictures!”

    Surprisingly, my little LX3 point-and-shoot also attracts some scrutiny. I would have thought, since everyone seems to carry a portable camera, that it would go unnoticed. My suspicion is that the general public all subscribe to the erroneous theory that cameras take pictures, not people. As such, they all believe their pictures would be so much better if they just had a better camera. The LX3 definitely looks like a more sophisticated point-and-shoot, and I frequently see people straining to make out its branding. This is not unique to me or my LX3. I’ve sat and observed crowds of camera-toters all casting curious glances at each other’s gear. Maybe the point-and-shoot is the new status symbol? Maybe people live in constant fear that the model they’re carrying will be perceived as ‘lame,’ causing them to perpetually look at other people’s cameras for validation? These are all theories, but they don’t obscure the fact: point-and-shoots get noticed.

    The DMC-G1 also gets noticed. Like the LX3, the attention it receives is benign but still palpable. There’s a sort of hokiness to the G1 that, I feel, makes it attractive to gadget freaks. The camera’s compact package is loaded up with all manner of knobs, dials, buttons and gizmos that are like catnip to technology geeks. Fortunately, I’ve been able to use this to my advantage. I simply stand on the street — camera at waist level and the LCD flung open — and just sort of look down curiously at it. It’s a goofy looking camera, so I play the role of an equally goofy nerd who can’t figure out all those knobs and buttons. In reality, I’m zone focusing and shooting free and unscathed.

    My experiences with the M8, though preliminary, are encouraging. I draped the M8 over my shoulder and took a couple walks along the busy downtown sidewalks — carefully watching the eyes of everyone who passed me. Several glanced, ever-so-briefly, at my camera. No stares, but enough of a peek to indicate that, on some sub-conscious level, people were noticing the M8. And really, why wouldn’t they? The thing is beautiful. So I took some black gaffer’s tape and covered both the white model number and the iconic red dot. The camera practically disappeared on the table. With a body shape that screams “mid-20th century,” and no shiny logos or writing to belie that fact, the M8 is transformed. It more resembles a Soviet-era knock-off that your grandfather might have picked up after World War II, than it does a modern image-capturing instrument.

    So I took a few more walks with the taped-up M8. No one noticed the camera. No one even glanced at it. Even when I would lift it to my eye, no one displayed a hint of recognition that I was a guy about to take a photo. With every camera I’d ever used, whether point-and-shoot or SLR, the very act of lifting it to eye level would send people scurrying in all directions — courteously attempting to remove themselves from whatever they assumed was my intended subject. With the M8? Nothing. Apparently, the M8 makes you invisible. Nothing is more desirable for a street photographer.

    Like a real sociologist, I’ve invented a theory to support my findings. And my theory is based on the fact that the M8 looks nothing like any camera sold in your neighborhood Best Buy store. Sure, it looks like a camera. But it looks like the one your great-uncle used to take that shoebox full of faded, badly focused vacation photos currently sitting in a puddle in your basement. In other words, it looks completely irrelevant to the modern world. And anyone still using such a thing must be equally irrelevant. This, I surmise, is why people don’t even try to move out of my way when I lift the M8 to my eye. “Why bother?” I hear them think. “The guy doesn’t even have a real camera, so how can he be taking a picture of anything useful?” KaTHUNK zawip. Gotcha!

    In Part 3, I’ll discuss M8 image quality and how I’m coming to terms with those crazy rangefinder conventions.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson

    ABOUT THESE PHOTOS: All images were shot using the Leica M8 and a 28mm Summicron lens.

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  • The M8ing Ritual (Part 1)

    The M8ing Ritual (Part 1)

    I purchased my first Canon EOS SLR nearly twenty years ago and, though I have sometimes gazed longingly upon the more specialized offerings from Leica, Hasselblad and Linhof, I’ve remained faithful to the format ever since. As an instrument of general photography, the SLR is simply more flexible, more adaptable, and more affordable than the alternatives — an attribute that’s served me well during my metamorphosis from casual hobbyist to serious professional. But in every relationship, there exist little irritants — little traits that, over time, grow from quirky annoyances into colossal inadequacies. And my long partnership with the SLR is no exception.

    For example, the SLR’s most endearing characteristic — its flexibility — has gradually become one of its most nettlesome. To sate the multifaceted needs of an ever-expanding marketplace, SLR designers continue to create hundreds of specialized settings and dump them into fussy, multi-level, on-screen menus that impact the camera’s immediacy and usability. While all these little settings have their time and place, they’re frequently configured to satisfy the requirements of the previous shot’s time and place, and not the one I wish to take currently.

    Problematic, too, is the format’s escalating bulk. Digital technology has yielded heftier SLR bodies and more cumbersome lenses, with each generation of sensor technology demanding greater performance from the glass in front. I reached a point where, unless I was going on a photo assignment, I was increasingly unwilling to take the SLR with me. Its heaviness nagged at my shoulder, and its prodigious lenses were pushy and ostentatious in crowds.

    Slim, sleek, semi-pro point-and-shoot cameras soon found their way into my coat pocket. And, though these lovely little wonders satisfy the desire for portability, they exhibit a total lack of respect for traditional photographic values. With their limited dynamic range, high noise levels and absolute denial to operate the way you want them to operate, they’re forever destined to be the ‘other camera.’

    For many photographers, the path ends here. They simply carry an SLR when image quality matters, and they carry a point-and-shoot when portability is key. I would likely have reached the same conclusion had my photography compulsion not extended to street photography — a discipline with a rather unique set of camera requirements.

    Street photography, as I first discussed in my Like a Leica series of articles, requires a combination of features and techniques that are present in neither the SLR nor the so-called “enthusiast” point-and-shoot cameras. For street shooting, I need fast glass and SLR image quality in a small, unassuming format. I need a camera that won’t put a labyrinth of menus and artificial intelligence between myself and my subject. I need something that can be zone-focussed and shot from the hip. I need a viewfinder that shows me the world outside my frame, so I can shoot at exactly the right moment. In short, I need a rangefinder. But my resistance to re-adopt a film-based workflow limited my options: I could choose either an old Epson R-D1 with its tiny 6 megapixel sensor and impractical 1.5 crop factor, or an overpriced Leica M8 with a reasonable 10 megapixel sensor and a workable 1.3 crop factor. “If only,” I fantasized, “I could somehow get an M8 for the price of an R-D1.”

    But fantasies are for fools, so I went with Plan B — a Panasonic DMC-G1 micro four-thirds format camera. With its slimmer profile and its ability to mount rangefinder lenses, the micro four-thirds format provides an intriguing solution to several street-shooter issues. In my final two Like a Leica entries, I discussed my preliminary thoughts about the format and judged that the G1 was, indeed, a better “street camera” than either the SLR or the point-and-shoot. Ultimately, I concluded it was an ideal compliment to a rangefinder, but not a substitute.

    In the months since I first published those articles, I have shot extensively with the G1 — using both its kit lens and an adapted Voigtländer 35mm f/1.4 Nokton lens — and my conclusions are essentially unchanged. I have come to love zone-focusing with the Voigtländer, and have used that capability to capture images that would never be possible had I lifted the camera to my eye. And, speaking of my eye, I’ve become somewhat less-enamored of the G1’s electronic viewfinder. While it’s definitely better than having no viewfinder at all, beaming a brightly lit and flickering image directly into my eye has, on several occasions, triggered an optical migraine. If you’re prone to these stroboscopic fits of psychedelic temporary blindness, you have yet another reason to prefer optical viewfinders to the electronic variety. I’ve grown to love the G1’s articulated LCD while growing to loathe its quasi-consumer leanings that, more often than not, force me to fight the camera rather than work in tandem with it. Also, with a sensor only 1/4 the size of a full-frame SLR, the G1’s image quality is (to my eyes) more akin to a high-quality point-and-shoot than an SLR. So, like all things in life, the DMC-G1 is a compromise. But, more than any camera I had used previously, I could coerce it to become a reasonably competent ‘street shooter.’ With its articulating LCD and natural M-mount teleconverter ‘feature,’ the G1 earned a permanent compartment in my street-shooting bag — as my secondary camera. But that bag’s primary slot remained open and waiting for what, inevitably, could be its only rightful occupant — a rangefinder.

    Concurrent with my eternal quest to find a better street camera, I was tending to the needs of my bread-and-butter SLR — selling old photography and music equipment to fund the purchase of some additional L-lens for my EOS system. But once I completed the sale of the unneeded gear, I made an honest assessment of my current SLR lineup and decided that none of my photo assignments required anything other than the lenses I already owned. One object of desire, the 14mm f/2.8L II, is a very intriguing lens… but not essential. Another, the TS-E 90mm, would be an excellent small product lens… but I rarely shoot product photography and, if I do, I could always rent one. So with no pressing demand for the accumulated funds, I designated the cash as “Leica seed money.”

    Unfortunately, a new Leica M8.2 body costs three times more that I was willing to pay. The previous model, the M8, was also priced well beyond my reach. Even with used M8’s, there was a substantial gap between the going price and my actual budget. But I knew, if I spent even a single penny of that “seed” fund, the gap between wanting an M8 and owning an M8 would only widen. So I sat on the cash and resigned myself to waiting a couple of years for the gap to narrow. I kept a daily watch on eBay, but never found a ‘deal.’ I called the Leica guys at popflash.com and told them, if they ever come across a cruddy but functioning M8, to give me a call.

    After a couple months of waiting for my desired camera to cross their threshold, Popflash got proactive. They called Leica with my request and, apparently, Leica had a pair of used and abused factory demo M8’s in their headquarters. Supposedly, the bodies had seen enough handling and wear to make them undesirable for Leica collectors. But I’m not a collector. I’m a photographer. And I have no interest in purchasing a camera just to display it in a glass case. I could never see the point of owning a camera that devalued as soon as you mounted a lens on it. So, although my interest was piqued by the prospects of a ‘beater’ Leica, I knew I couldn’t possibly realize my fantasy of getting an M8 for the price of an R-D1. And, sure enough, I was right. My fantasy wasn’t realized — it was exceeded! This M8 — which comes directly from Leica with a 1-year factory warranty, a brand new battery, and includes two free IR-filters of my choice — was priced considerably less than I’d ever seen or dreamed. Needless to say, I leapt at the opportunity to own a factory-warranted camera that had already achieved its full devaluation. I can treat it like a camera, not as an objet d’art. I’ll be able to bump it on a lamp post or scoot it across a table without incurring a single financial penalty! If there are any functional problems, I can have it factory repaired for free. And, most importantly, a dirt-cheap M8 means I can put the savings into the most important component of any camera — the lenses. Therefore, I’m complimenting my Voigtländer 35mm f/1.4 Nokton with a used 28mm Summicron.

    So the stage is set. I, a 20-year veteran of the SLR (with all its inherent trappings, baubles and luxuries), am about to enter the bare-bones world of old-school rangefinder shooting. In part 2, I’ll begin to report on the inevitable thrills I’m sure to encounter and the frustrations I’ll likely endure.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson

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  • Of Glass Cacophonies

    Of Glass Cacophonies

    If you could somehow gather all the various classifications of photographic disciplines, toss them into a big metaphysical centrifuge and switch it on, what would happen? My theory is that all these photographic fields would separate into only two distinct styles: active and reactive.

    Every photograph is a mixture of two ingredients: planning and impulse. Add x percent premeditation to y percent spontaneity and you’ve got yourself an image. The only thing separating the various photo disciplines from one another is the relative value of x and y.

    Pure product photography, for example, is almost 100% premeditation. The photographer controls nearly every element of the photograph — having the ultimate say over lighting, camera position, angles, and set decoration. Fashion work also tends toward intent. But here, the presence of a live model increases the equation’s spontaneity percentage.

    Skewing decisively toward the “reactive” component are such disciplines as reportage, concert, street, and wildlife photography. Within these classifications, the photographer places himself into an environment that he cannot control — only respond to.

    Both wedding and event photography fall somewhere between these extremes — requiring similar amounts of both premeditation and spontaneity. Photographers in these disciplines often define and distinguish themselves by the amount they gravitate toward one of the two ingredients.

    All of us, no matter how stylistically ‘ambidextrous,’ have an innate leaning toward one style or the other. If we’re naturally premeditated photographers, we need to find ways to inject a little impulse into our photographs. And if we’re a more instinctual sort, our photography can always benefit from a little procedure.

    I fall into the ‘instinctual’ camp. Don’t get me wrong — I love it whenever a job affords me the opportunity to conceive, construct, and control every nuance of a shot — but it’s the thrill of the wild that drives my pathological need to photograph. That’s why, in controlled shoots, I still like to leave a few things to chance. For me, injecting a little uncertainty (to which I must then react) will produce a better image. This is why street photography is so exciting for me — it’s nothing if not uncertain. But that doesn’t mean it can’t benefit from a little structure.

    I touched on this, indirectly, in the article called The Positive of Being Negative. In that article, I discussed how I sometimes establish rules for my photographs, forcing myself to find new and creative ways to view a scene. Looking for the ‘negative’ of an image (as I described in that article) is but one way I do this. Another is to constantly scour a scene for some kind of ‘distorted reality.’ And the most literal way to distort reality is with glass.

    Windows, by their very nature, have both a reflective and transparent quality. One of my little tricks, which adds structure to street-shooting jaunts, is to pay attention to windows — looking for interesting shapes or juxtapositions between what’s happening behind a glass pane and what’s reflecting off of it.

    The above shot is taken directly into the front door of my downtown condo. It causes both confusion and uncertainty in the eye of the viewer. How many bodies blend together? Where’s the focal point? Is the photo taken inside looking out, or outside looking in? I tend to like photos that ask more questions than they answer, and windows provide an excellent means toward this end.

    The following image attracted me because each of the framed windows either reflects or transmits a completely different scene. Even though it’s a single environment, the individual panes become separate pictures, almost like a self-contained ‘gallery.’

    And, as a final example, the following picture caught my eye one evening. The transparency of the glass allowed me to photograph a waiter who stood inside a restaurant looking out. Meanwhile, the glass’ reflective properties enabled me to also photograph the street scene upon which he gazed.

    Every now and then, we all need a little extra inspiration. Reactive photographers can sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that ‘nothing is happening,’ and therefore think there’s nothing to photograph. But by actively looking for photographs in non-standard places, an improvisational photographer can always find something worth reacting to.

    ©2009 grEGORy simpson

    If you find these photos enjoyable or the articles beneficial, please consider making a DONATION to this site’s continuing evolution. As you’ve likely realized, ULTRAsomething is not an aggregator site — serious time and effort go into developing the original content contained within these virtual walls.