With fewer than 24 hours remaining before the opening ceremonies, the Olympic torch finally arrived on the shores of downtown Vancouver. I spent the better part of Friday following the torch around the city — sometimes entering the swarm, and sometimes hovering on its periphery. The shot, above, shows a typical scene on a typical street corner in downtown Vancouver. Anyone who’s ever played “Where’s Waldo?” might want to ply their spotting skills, and hunt for the Olympic flame in this photo. It’s there. Really.
Shooting the Olympic flame from within the crowd is somewhat like being in a mosh pit, but without the crappy music. Moments before the runner arrives, and within 1 meter of your own body, 200 cameras attached to 400 arms all rise into the air — swinging wildly to and fro in an attempt to find a shot line between the other 199 cameras in their immediate vicinity. In an instant, and not unlike the experience of photographing a Formula One race from trackside — the flame zooms past and is gone — disappearing into the next meter’s sea of 200 cameras and 400 arms. I grab whatever shot I can get. In the case of the photo, below, it’s Michael Buble carrying the torch into the Live City Yaletown facility. For a brief moment, I ponder the wisdom of living in downtown Vancouver where, at 34,000 people per square mile, we have one of the world’s highest urban density centers. As I cogitate on this statistic, the crowd has carried me like a leaf in a white water stream, 2-blocks down the street. I managed to grab a lamp post to keep myself from getting swept further into the frothing human rapids.
And so it went for an entire day. As the torch zigged through the city, I zagged — staying one step ahead of the flame but never, for a moment, escaping the enthusiastic masses crowding the downtown streets. By mid-afternoon, I realized my best chance to get an unobstructed shot of the flame would occur on the shores of False Creek, which the torch was scheduled to cross by canoe.
On Saturday and Sunday, I succumbed to the desire to be a tourist in my own town — visiting as many Olympic venues as possible, and soaking up the culture and excitement of the games. Today, Monday, I will regain my professional composure and, joyful indiscretions behind me, begin to photograph these games with the sort of “street” eye that I, and my readers, expect.
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Its inevitability has, for a decade now, been forced into my consciousness and my subconsciousness. It’s become a part of my Id, my Ego, and my Super-Ego. Its costs, benefits, politics and promise have permeated local news outlets since I first moved to Vancouver at the dawn of the 21st century. “It” is the XXI Olympic Winter Games and, in four days, “it” finally arrives in my downtown neighbourhood — on the very streets that I traverse each and every day.
There is a flurry of activity unlike anything I’ve seen before. Last minute construction projects seemingly exist on every corner and, if I didn’t know better, I’d swear that “construction worker chic” is this year’s haute couture — anyone not sporting a hardhat and tool belt is so “last year.”
Although the Olympic Games don’t open until this Friday, the tourism influx has begun en masse. Many streets are now closed to traffic — their sidewalks no longer able to contain the exuberant throngs of revellers.
Last year, in an article entitled ‘Tween the ‘Weens, I postulated that there was no greater day for a street photographer than Halloween. So sweet the ignorance of youth. For, in reality, Halloween is but a flickering candle compared to the magnificent luminosity of the Olympic torch. Look left, look right, look up or down — photo opportunities abound in every direction.
Perhaps, like the image above, a photo opportunity might appear within life’s simple moments — a glimpse of a gentleman struggling to contort himself into a snowboarding pose.
Or on a more global scale, as shown below, it might be Taiwanese First Lady, Chow Mei-ching and her entourage, touring the Lantern Forest and Sculpture Garden on Granville Street. Some of the sculptures are a bit avant-garde — a fact that, perhaps, should have been communicated in advance.
Maybe, as seen here, the photo opportunities will appear metaphorically. Fame, riches, and an early retirement await official Olympic mascots Quatchi, Miga, and Sumi. But for those mascots who, for one reason or another, failed to attract the attention of the International Olympic Committee, 2010 promises to be another tough year.
I’ve got my cameras. I’ve got my lenses. And I’ve got comfortable shoes. Let the games begin!
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There’s an old riddle that asks, “Where does an 800 lb. gorilla sit?” The answer is, of course, “anywhere it wants to.” Ostensibly, this article is about photographing the NAMM show in Anaheim, California. But it’s also about photography’s own 800 lb. gorilla — the modern state of photojournalism.
I’ve spent the bulk of my adult life designing, documenting, and using high-tech musical instruments and recording gear. Like lemmings, those of us involved with this profession embark, each January, on an annual pilgrimage to the NAMM show in Anaheim, California. For all intents and purposes, NAMM is an industry trade show — matching folks who develop and manufacture musical products with those who buy them. To the man on the street, NAMM — like any industry trade show — is about as significant as your brother’s second wife’s cousin’s first husband’s sister-in-law.
But there’s something a little ‘different’ about NAMM, starting with its name. NAMM is an acronym for the “International Music Products Association.” If you think that’s absurd, you’re in for a treat. NAMM is a daft and enormous human interest story. It’s a cornucopia of stars, wannabes, has-beens, and never-wases. It’s a sea of burned out salesmen and bubble-bottomed booth babes. It’s fashion faux-pas-a-go-go — a dense and delicious parade of hairspray, costumes, cheese, hype, and hyperbole. It’s a cultural clash in which french horn aficionados, software nerds, and guitar shredders all converge and breathe the same air for a 4-day period. It’s the bars, the parties, and the frantic midnight design tweaks. It’s the endless walking, talking, and negotiating. NAMM is its own civilization. It’s an event that, I believe, would pique the interest of the general public were they to actually learn of its existence.
NAMM is not without press coverage. But like most industry shows, it attracts only industry press. In this case, that means publications and web sites that cater to the musical products industry. To the industry press, NAMM’s circus atmosphere is simply something to be endured. Deftly dodging mohawks and miniskirts, reporters flitter from booth to booth to bring their readers news of the latest supergadgets. Absent from the proceedings are the “real” press. I find this omission curious, because NAMM possesses enough attributes to garner a modicum of general appeal. After all, doesn’t everyone like celebrities? And who doesn’t enjoy the odd cultural train wreck? So, unlike the last 25 years in which I attended NAMM to gear-gawk, this year I turned my eye and camera away from the gizmos and contraptions, and toward the attendees themselves.
Fundamentally, photographing trade shows is quite similar to my favorite photographic discipline — street photography. However, from a technical standpoint, there are a few key differences. First, there’s the light… or lack thereof. Trade shows are dimly lit, and the color spectrum is bizarre (at best) and punishing (at worst). The thick crowds can hamper a photographer’s mobility and positioning, and the miles of aisles make it essential that your equipment is as portable as possible.
I chose a fairly simple and flexible kit: Around my neck was a Leica M8 with a 28mm f/2 Summicron lens. Slung across my shoulder and dangling, upside-down on a BlackRapid R-Strap, was a Canon 5DmkII with an 85mm f/1.8 lens. The Leica’s mission was to shoot ambience, fleeting moments, and anything necessitating a “wider” field of view. The Canon’s mission was to shoot closeups and anything I felt would benefit from its lower ISO noise. The Leica, as always, was my “run and gun,” go-to camera. I kept it set at ISO 1250, 1/125s, and f/2.8. In an ideal world, I would prefer to have used ISO 640, but I couldn’t risk the motion blur that would result if I dropped the shutter speed a stop. Nor could I gamble on f/2 and its narrower depth-of-field. I was zone-focussing so I could respond to NAMM’s frequently ephemeral moments — a technique that rarely enables one to achieve critical focus. Hence, I needed the extended depth-of-field to mask the inevitable “focus errors” guaranteed by this approach. Whenever I had more than a couple of seconds to frame and capture a photo, I’d sling the 5DmkII up to my eye. Under these lighting conditions, I knew the 5DmkII would give me a higher-fidelity photo, while the Leica would insure I’d capture those momentary opportunities that would elude the SLR.
The combination worked well and allowed me to be quick, mobile, and agile. The 5DmkII, which I don’t normally subject to crowds, nestled comfortably into the small of my back, and its 85mm lens (which I chose mostly for its lightness and diminutive dimensions) did not protrude from my body. Nor did it, in any way, create an impediment for my mobility in the crowds.
In today’s world, shooting a story is the easy half of the equation. Selling a story is something entirely different. Selling requires you to shake hands with that 800 lb. gorilla. And, frankly, I haven’t found this particular primate to be overly affable. Of course, photojournalists have been bemoaning the ‘inevitable’ demise of the profession since the 1960’s but, in reality, the vocation hasn’t so much declined as changed.
Television, for example, did not eliminate photojournalism. Instead, it gave us a new form of photojournalism based around moving pictures, rather than stills. Television did not entirely replace print. Newspapers and newsmagazines remained valid and profitable sources of information, and these print sources relied heavily on “iconic images” — photographs that would summarize a story and invoke emotion and reaction in ways that words never could. Television, recognizing the need to succinctly encapsulate an entire story in the same way as an iconic image, developed its own version — the “sound bite.”
Things remained relatively stable until the early days of the world wide web, when some dim bulb of a businessman decided that newspapers and newsmagazines should offer all their online content for free. Fast forward fifteen years, and we have only a smattering of newspapers remaining. Those that remain have all fired their photography departments — choosing, instead, to invite readers to email their cellphone photos to the newspaper. The result? A photographic literalness that is as obvious as it is boring.
I come from the “iconic image” school. It’s not an actual school, but a way of seeing things and thinking about the world. On a personal level, I am touched more by powerful photographs than by words, video, or sound. I remember history by its iconic images. When I look for photographs in my own life, I look for metaphors, symbols, and allegory. For me, a story isn’t so much about the actual event; it’s about how that event affects someone or something. I find, with each passing year, a dwindling number of people who feel as I do; who understand that photography does not need to be literal and is, in fact, more powerful through metaphor. The 800 lb. gorilla does not appreciate photography nor its ability to tell a story. The 800 lb. gorilla does not seek subtlety, context, or meaning.
Photojournalism is changing… but into what? No one knows exactly. As “news” websites continue to fill their pages with blatantly obvious and freely obtained cellphone photos, is there still a paying market for photography? If there is such a market, where is it developing, and in what format? While pacing the carpeted blue aisles of the 2010 NAMM show, these questions rattled around my head. Who, today, would actually pay for photos from NAMM? Assuming such a publication even exists, what sort of images do they want? Is the iconic image dead? Should I shoot quantity rather than quality? What do I need to do in order to sell these photos?
First, I stifled my own aesthetic urges and capitulated to the deafening demand for color. Second, I succumbed to my theory that modern readers quickly grow bored with a few ruminative images and, instead, prefer the constant stimulation of many. Third, I bowed to my belief that these same mythical and modern readers aren’t even readers at all, but “watchers.” This meant I would need to present my text and images in a colourful, quick-cut, video-like format, rather than a traditional text and photo spread. The result appears on the linked page, below:
Am I cynical? Maybe… probably… OK, definitely. I don’t necessarily fear for an end to photojournalism, but I do fear for an end to poignancy — an end to what Cornell Capa called “concerned photography.” I, and others like me, will bend and mold and persevere. I have audio and music skills, writing skills, photography skills, and video editing skills. In short, I have all the “tools” to be a journalist in the coming iPad-driven “convergence” age of media. If media outlets one day become profitable and willing to pay for content, I can provide it. But I worry that the iconic, thoughtful, and solitary image will be pushed aside and lost amongst the hoopla, noise, and frenzy of all that motion, sound, and graphics. Will photojournalism still be about the story, or will it become media for media’s sake?
My fear is tempered by optimism. Magnum Photos is attempting to show us that the iconic images shot by their (and the world’s) greatest photographers can still pack a wallop in the modern world; that multimedia can actually enhance, rather than detract from, the images. To test their theory, I viewed Magnum Photos’ multimedia presentation of Josef Koudelka’s photographs of the 1968 invasion of Prague. I believe Josef Koudelka is one of the greatest photographers to have ever walked the earth. Magnum’s presentation of this story shows us that great images can transcend their print origins and, if treated with respect and understanding, thrive in this digital age of convergence.
Oh, and that silly little multimedia NAMM story that I crafted specifically for a modern audience? Turns out there was no need to worry. There are actually plenty of content-hungry websites that are more than happy to publish it… for free. Welcome to photojournalism in the year 2010.
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I watched my friend light the wick on a small alcohol burner and place it under a glass container filled with fresh water. As heat from the single flame increased the water’s temperature, it began to steam. The pressure of the steam forced the water to rise from the lower glass container, through a tube, and into another glass container above it. The freshly ground coffee within the upper vessel began to dance violently within the turbulent, churning water. When the last drops of water had been forced into the upper chamber, my friend extinguished the flame and the resulting vacuum drew the rich brown liquid through a filter and back into the bottom container. He decanted it into a large cup, and I took my first sip — heavenly.
This method for brewing coffee, invented in the 1830’s, has long since been replaced by the faster, easier, and cleaner drip machine. In this hurry-up world that values convenience over quality, the vacuum technique has been nearly forgotten. What a shame. Because there’s absolutely nothing that will rival the quality of a cup of coffee prepared in this manner.
As I sat nursing that luxurious beverage, I pulled my ‘new’ late-1950’s Yashica Mat Twin Lens Reflex from my camera bag. I fondled its beautiful dials, popped open its viewfinder, and gazed down onto the ground glass focusing screen. There, on the screen, I saw the image of my friend disassembling and cleaning his vacuum coffee apparatus. “Such a lot of trouble,” I said to myself, “but so worth it.”
The statement applied to the coffee maker, but it might just as well have applied to the camera. Like the vacuum coffee method, the Twin Lens Reflex (TLR) is a mechanical marvel — born of another time, forgotten in the haste of our convenience-centric world, but without peer for those whose passions force them to look beyond the ordinary.
In Part One, I outlined the rationale behind my decision to purchase a TLR. In actuality, I had always wanted a Rolleiflex. Their utilitarian beauty and the genteel manner in which one must bow when taking a photograph appealed to my aesthetic nature. The photographer in me liked the big 6×6 negative, the fabulous lens, and the fact that it could deliver impeccable images — as demonstrated so aptly by such greats as Richard Avedon and Helmut Newton. The rush to digital has seen many a photographer abandon his old medium format equipment in exchange for the latest plastic Wunderkamera. This means we’re now living in a buyer’s market. And a buyer’s market means bargains. And bargains mean that even a photographer of meager means can own a Rolleiflex.
Unfortunately, my means aren’t quite highfalutin’ enough to be classified as “meager.” Rolleiflex cameras have ‘collector appeal,’ which means many people buy them for the prestige of owning them, rather than the fun of using them. My desire to own a Rolleiflex had everything to do with “use” and nothing to do with “prestige.” Since I wasn’t 100% certain I’d enjoy photographing with a TLR, I wasn’t quite ready to experiment with the process at Rolleiflex prices. So, instead, I purchased a Yashica Mat — a 1950’s Japanese camera that faithfully and painstakingly stole nearly every design element from the German Rolleiflex. Yashica Mats have no collector value and no commensurate mark-up. At last, I had my TLR.
Ancient History 101
For the edification of those who are unfamiliar with Twin Lens Reflex cameras, I’ll provide a brief overview. These cameras have — as you can tell by both nomenclature and appearance — two lenses, not one. Both lenses are of equal focal length. The top lens, called “the viewing lens” has no shutter or adjustable aperture. It is forever and for always watching the world pass before it, and projecting a view of that passing world onto a large ground-glass screen, which the photographer uses to frame and focus the image. The viewing lens is never used to take the photo — only to provide the photographer with a ‘preview’ image. The bottom lens, cleverly called the “taking lens,” is the one with the adjustable aperture and shutter, and is used to actually expose the film and take the picture.
The twin lens system provides numerous advantages over the more well-known single lens (SLR) method. All SLRs have a mirror that sits between the film plane and the lens, which is what allows you to look through the lens to frame and focus your shot. TLRs have no such mirror, since you view the world through one lens and capture it with another. The problem with the SLR is that, when you press the shutter release, the mirror needs to swing up and out of the way. This is a source of several frustrations. First, when the mirror swings up, you can no longer look through the lens. This means your viewfinder ‘blacks out’ precisely at the most important moment — the moment of exposure. Prior to the days of digital cameras with rear-panel LCDs, this moment of blindness meant photographers never really knew whether or not they had captured the ‘decisive moment.’ Second, the physical force required to rapidly flip a mirror out of the lens path creates a lot of vibration. Vibration results in camera movement, which reduces image sharpness and, in particular, forces photographers to use faster shutter speeds than they would ordinarily wish to use. Third, the noises emitted by an SLR’s slapping mirror and focal plane shutter are quite loud in comparison to the nearly silent leaf shutters used by TLR’s. This makes the TLR far stealthier than the SLR.
Of course, for every argument one can proffer for the TLR, SLR aficionados can offer a counter-argument. For example, because you look through a different lens than you photograph with, TLRs are prone to parallax error. So, too, is it impossible to preview a photograph’s depth-of-field with a TLR. I’ll leave it up to you, the reader, to determine which system’s advantages speak to your needs.
View From the Streets
In the 1950’s, the TLR was highly touted for its discretion. The main reason for this reputation is that, because you peer down into the camera rather than raising it to your eye, it’s much less obvious when you’re taking a photograph. And, when you do take a photograph, its leaf shutter emits almost no noise at all. Here in 2010, a TLR is no longer a discreet photographic tool. When was the last time you saw someone walking around with a TLR dangling from their neck? In the 1950’s this would have been a fairly common sight, so a photographer could easily fire off waste-level shots without the subject’s knowledge. Today, the very act of carrying a TLR in public is somewhat akin to walking down the street with a live lobster on your head. People will notice you. Everyone will notice you. This single fact, alone, is worth the $95 I spent on the Yashica Mat, because the looks I get from total strangers are priceless. It’s amazing how many different ways people can contort their faces, yet still convey that the phrase, “what a moron!” is echoing through their head.
Sadly, its ability to attract both attention and derision limit the Yashica Mat’s use for documentary-style street photography, though I haven’t totally given up the idea. I imagine that large crowds will dilute the ‘lobster hat’ effect of the Yashica Mat, and it might yet prove its worth as a capable camera for reportage. One of the more interesting scenarios, which I have yet to try, is to hold the camera upside-down, high above my head. I will then be able to gaze straight up onto the focus screen and photograph a viewpoint available only to professional basketball players and people with articulating LCDs. I plan to give the Yashica Mat a thorough ‘street’ workout come February, when the 2010 Winter Olympics descend upon my Vancouver home.
Getting to Know the Yashica Mat
As you might gather, photographing with the Yashica Mat requires deliberate and thoughtful action. Modern, digital photographic conveniences that I’d long ago taken for granted were instantly flushed away, and I was forced to reconnect a neural network that hadn’t been powered on in over a decade. Not only would there be additional complexities related to scanning the film, processing the film, and exposing the film — but even the very act of choosing the film has a certain gravitas. With digital cameras, you can choose your ISO speed on a shot-by-shot basis, but when you load a roll of 120 film, you commit to shooting at a single ISO speed for the next 12 images. How long will it take me to expose the next 12 shots? Will I shoot mostly indoors or outdoors? Under bright sun or cloudy conditions? If I guess wrong, my images will suffer. All that pressure and I haven’t even loaded the camera yet!
Fortunately, it was quite sunny on the day my Yashica Mat arrived, and I knew I’d be shooting a full roll in order to get a feel for the camera. So I felt comfortable with my decision to unwrap a package of 100 speed film. As I threaded the film onto the upper spool and began to rotate the camera’s crank, I heard a little voice mutter, “you must be crazy.” I looked around the room, but saw I was alone. I closed the camera back, and continued to crank the film advance handle. “You’re totally crazy,” said the little, disembodied voice.
“Look,” I shouted to no one in particular, “not only is the camera beautiful, but it only cost $95!” The voice said nothing. What could it say? It knew I was right. I slung the Yashica Mat over my shoulder and headed outside.
After surviving the stress of deciding which film to load, I knew the next problem I’d encounter would be setting exposure. This particular model Yashica Mat doesn’t have a built-in meter. Although I’m fairly adept at assessing and applying the numerous variants of the “Sunny 16” rule, I wasn’t sure exactly how accurate this camera’s aperture or shutter speed might be. So, to be on the safe side, I also brought along my Sekonic L-358 light meter.
I quickly realized my choice of film speed was even savvier than expected. I wanted to test the performance of the f/3.5 lens at its wider settings, but the Yashica Mat has a maximum shutter speed of only 1/500s. I’d grown so accustom to the 1/8000s speed offered by my digital cameras, that I’d failed to take this factor into consideration when selecting which film to load. Had I chosen to load the camera with 400 speed film, the combination of that 2-stop penalty, coupled with the 4-stop shutter speed penalty, would have required me to shoot at f/8 or higher. It’s amazing how mentally soft I’ve gotten in the digital age.
Having now selected the proper film, and circumnavigated any exposure issues, it was time to face the third barrier standing between myself and my first photograph — framing. I popped open the top of the TLR and gazed down upon its focusing screen. Greeting me was a big 2 1/4″ square view of the world in front in front of me. I turned my body to the right, so as to compose a better shot — the camera responded by moving the image in the opposite direction. “Crap,” I thought, “I completely forgot that the viewfinders on these cameras show a mirror image of the scene.” If you’re looking at the focus screen and think you need to move the camera a little to the right, you really need to move it a little to the left. It’s as annoying now as it was way back in the day. Fortunately, photography and bicycle riding have a lot in common and, by the end of my first roll of 120, I was once again accustom to, if not thoroughly comfortable with the inverted image.
With the image now properly framed, I was ready to focus. I again gazed down at the focus screen. The image looked a bit soft, so I turned the focus knob. The image looked even softer. I turned the knob in the opposite direction. Still soft. I suddenly realized that my presbyopic eyesight was causing a problem similar to that which plagues my ability to use the rear LCD on a modern digital camera — I simply can’t focus on near objects without donning my reading glasses. Although the viewfinder on the TLR is far enough from my eye to provide a reasonably clear view for framing, it’s still too close for me to make critical focus decisions. Fortunately, those clever TLR designers thought of this, and provide a solution — a pop out magnifying glass! A spring-loaded magnifying loupe is attached permanently to one of the viewfinder shades. A quick push to the shade flips out the glass, which sits directly over the centre of the viewfinder. With this, I was able to achieve critical focus without having to fumble and bumble about with reading glasses.
Finally! The camera was loaded with the correct film, the exposure was set, and the image was framed and focused. I pushed the shutter release — nothing. Oh, that’s right. I’ve got to flip out the handle, crank the film into position, and cock the shutter. Duh! I cranked the crank, re-framed the image, checked the focus and… pszt! The soft-spoken whisper of the leaf shutter was like music to my ears.
Immediately, I was flooded with a desire to look at the image! Did the camera’s aperture and shutter deliver the correct exposure? Did I jerk the camera? Is there a signature look to the taking lens? Does it flare? Never could I imagine how much I — a man so derisive of the modern photographer’s obsessive need to chimp images on his LCD — would wish for a chimp screen of my own. In that instant, a whole host of additional memories returned. I remembered how I would sometimes take an exciting photo near the beginning of a roll, then have to wait days (or even weeks) before I would finish the roll and process the film. In that time, my excitement about that photo would only grow, and my expectations for it would magnify with each passing day. Waiting to see one’s pictures conjures up many of the same emotions as a child feels waiting for Christmas day. It’s a rather pleasant feeling and, more importantly, it teaches us the art of patience — a trait that much of mankind began to relinquish right around the time we let drip coffee makers into our homes.
Digital Integration
After paying the $5 processing fee to my local lab, I held the exposed strip of film up to the light — Hurray! There were images contained within every frame. My 50 year old camera works! I rushed home, cut the film into 4 strips of 3 exposures each, and loaded the first strip into my Epson V600 scanner. I had learned long ago to avoid a scanner’s bundled software and have, instead, been using Hamrick’s VueScan for the past decade. I launched VueScan and spent the next hour experimenting with different scan settings, resolutions, and bit depths. Ultimately, I’ve chosen to scan my 120 negatives with some fairly simplistic parameters — 3200 dpi; 24-bits; single pass.
Although my scanner has an optical resolution of 6400 dpi, I could see little (if any) difference between a negative scanned at 6400 dpi and one scanned at 3200 dpi and up-sampled. A 6400 dpi scan creates a 200 megapixel image — a file so large that even the most rudimentary post-processing operations make darkroom printing seem like a snappy, fast-paced activity. Neither did I see any demonstrable evidence that increasing the number of scanning passes resulted in a higher fidelity file. While I could see subtle differences between an image scanned in one pass versus the same image scanned in three, I was hard-pressed to pronounce that one was actually “better” than the other — just different. So, single-pass scans work fine for me. I did make one concession to a slower workflow — I’m performing an infrared pass to assist with the process of cleaning any dust or scratches from the negative. Careful analysis revealed no detrimental effects from the process, and the time saved manually removing some of these dust specs more than offsets the time required by the extra scanning pass.
The end result is a 50 megapixel square image that contains copious amounts of detail coupled with scads of forgiving analog dynamic range. I may be a Leica lover and a fan of the 3:2 negative, but my favorite aspect ratio has always been the humble square. Unlike the rectangular formats, the 1:1 ratio uses the majority of the image circle projected by the object lens. Rectangular images pre-crop your photos by discarding a large percentage of usable image. The square format, in contrast, captures everything and lets you decide, later, how best to crop the photo.
The 50 megapixel files fit nicely into my digital workflow. They’re stored on a hard drive, and catalogued in Adobe Lightroom, right along side the digital captures — ready, willing, and able to handle any extreme post-processing demands I wish to make on them.
Conclusions
Shooting with the Yashica Mat is more than just a blast from the past — it’s a blast. Period. Its photos have a certain ‘classic’ look that’s decidedly analog yet, by scanning the negatives, you can work with its images exactly as you do with those captured by your digital gear.
There are, obviously, more steps to take and more considerations to make when you shoot film. You can’t change ISO in mid-roll; you can’t check your images in the field; you can’t get the images into Photoshop without first processing and scanning the film. But, unless you’re too young to have had any experience with film, these are all things you knew before diving into the deep end.
I’m certainly not new to film, but I am new to the experience of shooting with a Twin Lens Reflex. My love for rangefinders had convinced me that, likely, I would also enjoy the TLR process. Like a rangefinder, one frames and focuses a TLR by looking through a viewfinder that’s in proximity to the taking lens — rather than looking through the lens itself. My prediction proved accurate, and I took to the Yashica Mat quite quickly. Any time you get a new camera — even one that’s over 50 years old — it forces you to break some old habits and see the world in a slightly different way. Even knowing this, I wasn’t quite prepared for the liberating new way I see the world with the TLR. As much as taking a photo with a modern point-and-shoot feels ‘wrong,’ taking a photo with a TLR feels “right.”
There are quirks and curiosities to be sure. Once, the film advance mechanism locked up, and I was forced to reset the film counter — a process that apparently caused me to waste 3 shots in the middle of a 120 roll. On another occasion, I removed the camera from my bag, only to notice that the back plate’s locking mechanism had somehow failed — causing the back to crack open and fog one of the frames. Finally, after a decade of being able to shoot as many photos as I wanted “for free,” it’s a little hard to return to the frugal shooting tactics that film demands. Originally, I’d planned to offset the film processing costs by shooting black & white, which I can develop at home for about 1/4 the price. In reality, I probably won’t shoot enough with the TLR to justify the extra trouble. Besides, digital black & white conversion gives me much more control over the final image. Also weighing heavily in favor of color film is the fact that silver-based films (meaning “black and white”) do not work with a scanner’s dust-busting infrared scanning technique.
The Yashica Mat will never be my ‘go to’ camera. The inherent restrictions of 120 roll film, the deliberate nature with which one must expose, focus and frame, plus the tedium of scanning — all combine to make photographing with a Yashica Mat a labor of love. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this. Even though I photograph professionally, that doesn’t mean I have to use every camera in a professional situation. Any photographer, worthy of his trade, got started because of a love for photography; and shooting with a Yashica Mat has a way of rekindling that love.
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.
Ponder, for a moment, the humble point-and-shoot camera. Each year, over 100 million Homo sapiens will slip a new one into their pants pocket or satchel — thus fulfilling their species’ instinctual obligation to substantiate all travels and milestones with irrefutable photographic evidence. Interwoven with this primary biological need is a second — to periodically replace a perfectly capable gadget with a shinier, newer model. Camera manufacturers, ever willing to satisfy both of these basic instincts, introduce new cameras with new features every few months. January’s pricey innovations become July’s budget orthodoxies, as developers leapfrog each other’s specifications — all in the hope that us humans will discard our old cameras and purchase new ones.
Today, $300 will buy you a snazzy little point-and-shoot camera like the Nikon Coolpix S70. For all those hard-earned dollars, you’ll get a 3.5″ high resolution touch screen, image stabilization, HD video recording, and a plethora of bells that’ll smooth skin and fix red eye, whistles that’ll recognize faces and prevent you from photographing a frowny one, and sirens that’ll insure your personal photos are at least reasonable facsimiles of those in the brochure. It might also include (though I’m guessing here) a backscratcher, a flotation device, and an instant popcorn maker.
That’s a seemingly tremendous value. At least until you consider what you’re giving up in return — a camera. OK, I know there’s one in there somewhere. Slide it under a microscope, and you’ll discover that most point-and-shoot cameras capture your precious images on a tiny, 28 sq. mm sensor. If you’re having trouble picturing how small that is, here’s a visual aid: the fingernail on the little pinkie of my left hand measures 120 square mm — and I have small, girly-size hands. This means all those cherished memories of your adorable puppy, your daughter’s first birthday, and your once-in-a-lifetime trip to Rome are being captured on a device that’s only one quarter the size of your little fingernail.
If this revelation elicits no more than a nonchalant shrug, I’ll remind you that photography requires the capture of light. The bigger the light-capturing device, the higher the potential fidelity.
Consider this: 110 years ago, Kodak created a new camera — the Brownie — and a new film format to accompany it. That film, which recorded an image “only” 3135 sq. mm in size, was considered too small for professional use, but was quickly adopted by amateur photographers. In 1901, Kodak made some slight modifications to the format, and dubbed the new film “120.” 120 film became the format of choice for Hasselblad, Mamiya, Bronica, Rollei, and other medium-format film cameras, and it’s still manufactured today. If, in 1901, photographers considered a 2.25″ square negative to be “amateur” in size, what might they think of the sensor in today’s point-and-shoot cameras — a sensor 112 times smaller than the Brownie’s?
To make matters worse, marketing pressures require modern camera manufacturers to cram as many pixels as possible onto that tiny sensor. Theoretically, the more pixels you have on your sensor, the higher the resolution of your photograph. The problem is, when you stuff 12 million of them onto a surface that’s only one quarter the size of your little fingernail, each individual pixel is going to be mighty small. And, since each of these mighty small pixels is responsible for gathering, capturing, and properly identifying the color and luminosity of the light that strikes it, they’re not overly accurate. The result is that your combination backscratcher, flotation device, and instant popcorn maker will capture your memories with limited dynamic range, and a whole lot of digital noise. But to be totally fair, if your intention is to post these photos into your blog or print them on the ubiquitous 4×6 inch photo paper, their image quality is perfectly adequate. A point-and-shoot won’t make Steven Meisel fear for his livelihood, but it’s a heck of a lot better than having no camera at all!
The Quality Factor
Those who want their image quality to take a quantum leap forward are increasingly opting for the popular micro four-thirds (MFT) format. Although these cameras are significantly larger than most pants-pocketable point-and-shoots, they’re still lilliputian in comparison to the average, bulky dSLR. An entry-level MFT system will cost about 3x as much as that Nikon Coolpix S70 point-and-shoot but, at 243 sq. mm, its sensor is nearly 9x larger. The pixel count remains the same at 12 million, but they’ve become meaningful pixels — pixels that are now big enough and thirsty enough to suck up light, color, and intangible bits of sparkle.
MFT cameras are capable of producing excellent images under good light. But, for many, the low-light performance of MFT is still somewhat unsatisfactory. Another problem, unless you’re quite adept at compromising your aesthetics, is that the 12 megapixel sensor essentially limits you to prints no larger than 11×17. Also, if you’re not as skilled as Henri Cartier-Bresson at capturing edge-to-edge perfection, you’ll probably need to do a bit of cropping — which means your acceptable print size has likely dwindled to 8×10.
In general, the next step up from the MFT format is a Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera. Modern consumer and prosumer SLR’s have sensors that are larger than MFT, though still smaller than a traditional 35mm film frame. By now you’ve likely seen the developing pattern, and have rightfully concluded that the larger sensor in these entry-level SLRs will, all things being equal, provide even greater image fidelity than MFT.
For many professionals and enthusiasts, nothing short of a ‘full frame’ 35mm sensor will do. A sensor that’s the size of a single 35mm film frame has 864 square millimetres. All that extra elbow-room gives the sensor additional space for even more and even bigger pixels. The curious thing about the 35mm standard is that it — just like the 120 film format — was once considered “amateur.” In the 1920’s, Leica-designer Oskar Barnack chose the 35mm format because it allowed him to create smaller cameras, and because its aspect ratio conformed to the “Golden Rectangle.” Over the next decade, Leica’s popularity almost single-handedly established the 35mm format for still photography. In the earliest days, photographers were required to manually load the film into reusable cassettes before inserting it in the camera. In 1934, with the format’s popularity secured by Leica and its knock-offs, Kodak began to manufacture pre-loaded 35mm film cassettes, and the ‘135’ format was born. For the next 30 years, the 135 format would prove popular with hobbyists and photojournalists, but it wasn’t until the 1960’s that it finally overtook 120 film as the “King of Films.”
Today, the digital Leica M9 plops 18 million big, beautiful pixels onto its luxurious 864 sq. mm ‘full frame’ sensor. My 5D Mark II squeezes 21 million pixels into that same area. All that sensor area, dotted with all those cavernous pixels, gives you a wall-worthy 16×20 print. For a system nearly 4x the price of a micro four-thirds system, the 5D Mark II gives you a sensor that’s also nearly 4x larger, while also doubling the number of pixels.
Anyone not satisfied with this level of performance is usually shooting fine art, architecture, editorial, fashion, or high-end product photography. These endeavors are the domain of the medium format camera, which further extends the megapixel count while increasing the sensor size beyond that of the humble 35mm negative. Case in point is the new Leica S2. That camera puts 37 megapixels on a 1315 sq. mm sensor. It also gives us our first glimpse of the Law of Diminishing Returns: A basic Leica S2, with a single lens, costs about 7x the price of my similarly-equipped 5D Mark II, yet its pixel count has increased only 1.7x, and its sensor area only 1.5x. Ouch.
And the S2 still isn’t a ‘true’ medium format camera, which traditionally means ‘120’ film and a minimum of 2324 sq. mm on a 6×4.5 cm negative. To enter this rarified strata requires the new 60 megapixel Phase One P65+ system. If you must know, at the time of this publication, that camera will set you back $46,000. Well, $49,000 if you want a basic lens to put on it.
But what if you want more? What if you’re one of those guys (like me) who gravitates toward the 6×6 cm square format negative? If Phase One’s 60 megapixel, 2178 sq. mm sensor commands $49,000, what might a 72 megapixel, 3135 sq. mm sensor demand? $75,000? $100,000?
How about less than $100?!
(Virtually) Free Pixels
That’s right. I just purchased a medium format, 200 megapixel, 6×6 cm camera for less than half the price that Aunt Mildred gave the local appliance shop for her hot-pink point-and-shoot with 1/16 the number of pixels and 1/112 the sensor size.
The secret? Buy used!
Remember when, at the beginning of this article, I mentioned mankind’s instinctual need to replace perfectly competent cameras with newer ones? All I did is suppress this need and, instead, sniff around amongst the cameras cast off by generations past. Specifically, I ponied up $95 for a late 1950’s Yashica Mat with an 80mm f/3.5 lens. I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking, “A camera from the late 1950’s? Surely they weren’t making them with more than a couple of megapixels back then, were they?”
Well, here’s the deal. The Yashica Mat captures images in analog format on that big, beautiful 120 film — a format nearly four times larger than today’s ‘gold standard’ for image quality — the 35mm full-frame sensor. The snag, of course, is that Adobe Camera Raw won’t read analog film files. To get your images into Photoshop, you need to scan them first — a process that’s a bit like strapping yourself into a DeLorean and traveling 10 years back into the past… only better. Better because, in a rush to convert to an all digital workflow, photographers have dumped their film cameras as if they were made of SARS, wrapped in H1N1, and sprinkled with Ebola. That means medium format cameras — still expensive a decade ago — can now be purchased with a few old coins and some pocket lint. Scanners, too, are far better and much less expensive than they were at the turn of the 21st century. And film formulations have evolved to become more scanner friendly.
The Yashica Mat gives me an image area 1.4x larger than the $49,000 Phase One. In combination with my Epson V600 scanner, it’ll also give me 200 megapixels — 3.3x as many as the $49,000 Phase One! In truth, scanning a 120 negative at 6400 dpi is overkill. To prevent my computer from melting down and my hard drives from filling too rapidly, I’ll likely scan my Yashica Mat shots at 3200 dpi, which still gives me a luxuriously large 50 megapixel image to dive into.
Tradeoffs? Well, the Yashica Mat is manual focus, but I actually prefer manual focus. The Yashica Mat has no built-in light meter, but I often shoot using manual exposure anyway. Then there’s that film thing. OK, that’s a bit of a pain. I’ll have to purchase rolls of 120 film, load one into the camera and, after only 12 exposures, pop in a new roll of film. Then, before I can scan it, I’ll need to process it. If I’m lazy and let the local lab process it for me, this camera could end up costing me $1 every time I take a photo! Guestimating that a yet-to-exist 6×6 cm digital medium format camera would cost a minimum of $75,000, I can easily calculate that, should I eventually take 75,000 photographs, I would have been better off steering clear of the Yashica Mat. In other words, if I shoot one roll of 120 film every day for the next 17 years, I’ll have made a mistake. Be sure to check back in 2027 for my follow-up article.
So, that’s my plan. Obviously, I’m not expecting that a negative from a 50 year old, fixed-lens Rolleiflex copy, scanned on a budget desktop transparency scanner, will approach the quality of a Phase One camera system. But did I mention it cost less than $100?
Nor can I neglect the demands that a high-speed, high-pressure shooting schedule places upon a modern photographer and, by extension, his equipment. For me, the Yashica Mat is a luxury — a frivolity that will let me relax and take pictures in an old-world way, while still processing and sharing them in a way that’s thoroughly modern.
In Part 2 of this report, I’ll discuss the ups, downs, and sideways of the Yashica Mat and how it fits into a photographer’s workflow during this, the second decade of the 21st century.
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 does the blurry, black & white photograph of a man skating on Vancouver’s newly re-opened downtown ice rink have in common with the following photo of a thoroughly humiliated tiger?
And how is that Victorian tiger rug related to a picture of my own feet (size 8 1/2 D), taken from the northernmost corner of my condo?
Or these wistful wisps of windblown grasses?
Fear not, faithful readers, for this is not (yet) a quiz. These questions, unlike those I’ll ask later, are wholly rhetorical in nature. The simple answer is that they’re this years’ orphaned images. Captured on a whim and appealing to me on a personal level (see “The Self Portrait“), they are the loose ends and the misfits. They’re not part of a larger story; they’re not marketable as stock; they’re not newsworthy, gallery-worthy, or noteworthy.
If you’re like me, well… first, you have my condolences. Second, you take thousands of photos a year and, in all likelihood, have at least a hundred or so that you actually enjoy looking at. But you have absolutely no idea what to do with them.
What do you do with your orphaned images?
That’s not a rhetorical question — I’d really like to know.
Assume, for example, that you have a jones for architectural abstracts and, every year, amass a couple dozen that your finger refuses to drag to the trash icon. What fate befalls them?
And is there any market for a portrait of Sandhill Crane with its mouth agape?
Or all those little “slice of life” street shots you’re obsessed with taking?
And what if you have a compulsion to photograph dogs, but the name on your passport isn’t “Elliott Erwitt?”
Clever readers will surmise that I’ve already answered my own question: “write a pointless blog entry, then fill it with pointless images.” Admittedly, it’s an effective way to deal with, say, 1% of the backlog — but what about the other 99%? What do you, my fellow photographers, do with all your leftover, orphaned images?
Don’t answer yet, because there are even more questions to answer in the next section…
The First Twelve Months
It’s been one year since I launched the ULTRAsomething photography blog. As a professional writer, I had my first article published 21 years ago and, as a photographer, I had my first photo published 18 years ago. I’m not sure why it took me until last year to think of combining these two disciplines…
When I conceived of this blog, I had three purposes in mind. First, I planned to review and discuss the various bits of photo gear that I use. Second, I wanted to write about the creative and intangible elements that make photography a “craft” and not a science. And third, I thought it would provide a nice home for all those orphaned images.
I began inauspiciously — writing several short, pithy lens reviews. Immediately after publishing them, I started to question their worth. Whether or not I like a lens should have little or no bearing on whether or not you like a lens. So how were my opinions helpful? I toyed briefly with the idea of brushing the cobwebs off my old engineering diploma, and devising a series of laboratory tests that would yield demonstrable data upon which I could base an assessment. But this is contrary to the way I think, work, and function as a photographer. Measurements don’t tell me how well (or how poorly) a particular lens renders a particular subject — real world experience does.
So, within the first two weeks, I’d seemingly rejected both of the traditional reviewing methodologies — subjective and objective. Unless I went avant-garde and employed the I Ching to rate product adequacy, something had to give. That’s when I realized that the best way to review a product was to review it within the context of a specific photographic need. The problem with most product reviews is they tend to make blanket assumptions about photographers when, in reality, we’re all under different blankets. You can’t say “Camera A is great” without qualifying the statement. Camera A might well be great for some purposes, but totally inappropriate for others. Once I grasped the necessity to define the scope of my expectations, my subjective evaluations gained relevance. This resulted in a kind of organic and personal approach to equipment reviews — in fact, I’d be hard-pressed to call them ‘reviews.’ Rather, they’re ‘impressions.’ Whatever name they go by, posts such as “Like a Leica” and “The M8ing Ritual” have been instrumental in bringing a tremendous number of readers to my site. And now, having grown comfortable with this form of ‘un-review,’ I plan to continue the trend in 2010.
It’s the reviews that drive the majority of new readers to this site each day. I’m grateful to all of you who read and link to them in various photo-related forums. Every link brings new readers, and every new reader is a potential subscriber. Also, I’m very grateful to Michael Reichmann at Luminous Landscape for linking to this site in one of his own reviews. Luminous Landscape is one of the most respected photography sites on the web. That single link lent my site an air of credibility that would, were it not for the fact that both Michael and I currently offer our content for free, be extremely valuable. And, speaking of free, I would be totally remiss if I didn’t thank everyone who actually clicked the DONATE button on this site. You know who you are, and I’ve let each of you know exactly how much I appreciate it.
My second goal, as mentioned earlier, was to write about photography as a ‘craft’ and not a ‘science.’ It’s my belief that too many photographers let their equipment define their photography. The web is full of photographers who think a photo is the sum total of its sharpness, barrel distortion, and noise floor. But a sharp, rectilinear, noiseless photograph of a dull subject is still dull. While a soft, distorted, noisy photo of a compelling subject is still compelling. We, as photographers, all want to capture images with the highest fidelity possible, but too many of us get so wrapped up in the gear that we lose sight of the image. My goal, when beginning this blog, was to balance all those equipment discussions with discussions about creativity, personality and soul. Obviously, you can’t teach “soul,” but you can remind photographers that they actually have one — and that they need to get in touch with it should they wish to capture images with a life and personality that reflect the photographer’s, and not the camera manufacturer’s.
When I began, I knew my ‘photography as craft’ articles would never attract as many readers as the equipment reviews. Human nature is what it is and photographers, being human, are more likely to search for the ticket to better photography within their wallets than within their own subconscious. Analysis of this years’ site statistics indicate that, sure enough, my gear-centric articles garnered twenty times the number of readers. But rather than being discouraged by this figure, I’m actually encouraged. To my knowledge, no one has ever posted a link to one of my ‘photography as craft’ articles. This means the reader base for these articles derives from those who initially visit the equipment reviews. Specifically, it means that one in twenty readers find my unorthodox equipment articles compelling enough that they dig deeper into the site. I can live with that because, frankly, I have no interest in writing a 100% review-focused blog — there are plenty of those already. Rather, as a fan of photography and a lover of captivating photographs, I have a self-serving interest in seeing more of such photos created. A camera doesn’t fashion a captivating photograph — the person behind the camera does.
Obviously, to continue attracting people to the ‘craft’ articles, I must also continue writing the ‘gear’ articles. I enjoy writing both, but neither to the exclusion of the other. But what’s the proper balance? Is there a tipping point between too many craft articles and too many gear articles? Are the articles too long? Too short? Too frequent? Too few? Your response can help dictate the evolution of this site as it embarks on its second year.
The third goal I had upon starting this blog — using it as repository for orphaned photos — is an abject failure. Flipping briefly through my Adobe Lightroom catalog, I see at least a hundred photos that I like, but have not published. Some are waiting for me to blog about them. Some seem too good to just toss into a blog. Others were commissioned by clients and, as such, are not really ‘mine’ to publish willy-nilly. Many are pleasing to my own eye but are so decidedly unfashionable that, if published, would probably diminish my professional marketability. Which brings me back around to my initial query: “what do you do with your orphaned images?”
These writings are, after all, for you — my donators, subscribers, and readers. What do you want to see in Year Two?
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.
Vancouver’s midday sun sat low on the horizon. Most uncharacteristically for late November, neither clouds, nor fog, nor drizzle filled the air, and I struggled for a block or two against the full intensity of the sun’s blinding rays. The acute backlighting created an excessive contrast ratio that made photography futile. So I crossed the street to take advantage of the city’s 30-story man-made monoliths, which obliterated the rays and bathed the opposing sidewalk in a snapper-friendly spectrum of greyness.
As I crossed the street, my gaze — which normally scans a horizontal arc several meters before me — shifted downward so I could see and modify the exposure settings on my camera. I had long ago learned to reject a camera’s auto exposure recommendations, and was now setting exposures manually. With a little effort, the process was becoming as fluid and instinctual as the manual transmissions I preferred in my automobiles.
As my eyes dropped, I saw my toe inadvertently scuff across a pebble and propel it toward an open metal sewer grate. Clang!
I analyzed the reflectivity of the pavement. I looked at the softness of my shadow. I judged the extent to which the skyscrapers were blocking the direct sunlight, then set my aperture and shutter speed accordingly. Kerplunk!
“What was that?” I wondered. I had already forgotten that I had kicked up a pebble, so the sound of its splash startled me. “Must be a deep one,” I surmised as I paused to peer down through the grate. Far below my feet, in the blackened depths, I saw my own reflection peering back. Without thought or hesitation, I focused the lens at infinity, then held my camera parallel to the grate and took a photo. It’s what’s known as a “throw away” shot — the kind we photographers take every day and, more often than not, throw away.
Back home, clicking through the day’s captures, I was drawn to the sewer grate photo. It was odd, strangely unappealing, geometric, and a bit grainy. It seemed to invite scrutiny. What armchair Freud wouldn’t delight in the analysis of a photo in which the photographer’s own image appeared behind bars? What could be inferred from the notion that my likeness was reflected in a sewer? Or that it rest at the bottom of an inscrutably deep pit? Even I wasn’t sure exactly why these elements appealed to me. I deemed the photo a “keeper,” and a respectable “self portrait.”
It’s unlikely that anyone would argue with my description of this photo as a “self portrait.” After all, it’s a photograph in which the photographer, me, is the subject — pretty much the de facto definition of self-portraiture. But over the last couple of years, I’ve come to define “self portraits” in an entirely different way. To me, a “self portrait” is a photograph that reveals something about the photographer’s true soul — his proclivities, fantasies, aesthetics, and personality. The photographer, himself, does not need to be the subject. Nor is there any requirement dictating that the photographer need appear anywhere within the photograph at all! Rather, a “self portrait” is a photograph that divulges something of the photographer’s inner self.
Consider my previously-published photograph of a girl waiting in a nightclub queue. Even though I don’t appear in the photograph, and even though I’ve never met the girl, I regard this as a “self-portrait.” There’s something within the image that’s a reflection of myself — the way I see things, and the way I respond to them. There’s a sort of dreaminess to the girls’ expression that speaks to me in the same intangible way as Robert Frank’s classic Elevator Girl. Obviously, a photo like “Girl in a Nightclub Queue” isn’t going to speak to everyone. In fact, the image has received a bit of online criticism for being out-of-focus or, as one photographer noted, for being something that he would have simply deleted had he captured it. But, to me, there’s magic here. I don’t know what it is. I don’t know what compelled me to take the photograph. I don’t know what continually draws me to it. I do know one thing though — I’m not the least bit bothered by any criticism it receives. That’s because it’s a photograph made for me. It exists for only one reason — it pleases me. When we shoot for clients, we rarely have the luxury of pleasing ourselves. Even amateur photographers have “clients” in the form of friends or family members, who often feel compelled to approve or disapprove of the images.
When I photograph for clients, I must constantly consent to fashion. When I photograph for myself, I am gloriously unconcerned with it. If I were to present my ten favourite “self portraits” to a prospective client, I’d be laughed out of the office. However, if I selected a random collection of pedestrian photos and processed them with excessive micro-contrast to get a faux-HDR look, then 9 people out of 10 would think they were ‘great.’ They wouldn’t be. They would just be fashionable. Too many photographers confuse fashion with passion. In a never-ending quest for acceptance, they constantly strive to ape the popular techniques of the day, and never develop in a way that’s true to themselves.
If you think I’m throwing stones, I am. In fact, I’m throwing them in a glass house since I, too, was once guilty of confusing fashion with passion. Several years ago, I got a very good job because my portfolio contained photos like the ones shown above. I assumed, because they were the sort of photos that solicited the most enthusiastic response, that they must be my “best” photos. Yet I was, in many ways, embarrassed by them. It took me a long time to realize why I was embarrassed — it was because the photos weren’t a true reflection of my own self. They matched a fashionable aesthetic, but not mine. They pleased others, but not me. Such photos are still in my portfolio, and I still happily capture them — but they exist as a representation of my ability to fulfill the desires of a client, and not as a representation of my own psyche.
I used to only take photos that I thought would please others. As a result, I was forever displeased with my own work. I now no longer reject a photo opportunity simply because it’ll produce an unsellable or unpopular image. Last week, I took the “yellow chair” photo because I found it to be a compelling ‘landscape.’ The reasons why it’s compelling are obvious to me, though I’d be shocked if more than a smattering of the world’s population shared this view. But I don’t care. It’s a photograph for me, not for a client. It’s a photo for my soul-searching portfolio, not my job-hunting portfolio. It’s passion, not fashion.
Successful photographers have many masters, and possess the proficiency, knowledge, and vision to satisfy them all. But unless a photographer also seeks to satisfy himself, he is ultimately nothing more than a technician. In his most joyfully pure manifestation, a photographer has only one true master — himself. And, if left to contemplate which of his photos he most admires, an honest photographer will rarely choose the shots that earned him the most money or the most praise — he’ll choose the shots that, somehow and in some way, reveal something of himself. Those are the photographer’s “self portraits.”
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.
I have spent the bulk of my lengthening life blithely unconcerned with Halloween. Even in my childhood years, the day’s significance was slight. For me, its annual occurrence was as much about raking the leaves as about putting on a mask and begging for a bag of unwanted candy. By the age of 13, I was done with the costumes and the candy — though my leaf raking duties continued for another four years.
As an adult, I have been (and continue to be) a devout city dweller — sheltered from the suburban demands of rotting leaves and sugar-fueled trick-or-treaters. For several years, I would have been completely unaware of Halloween had I not needed to pass through mountains of candy, costumes and artificial cobwebs on my way to the local druggist’s cold & flu aisle.
As more years passed, I began to notice an increasingly large number of adults ‘dressing up’ for Halloween. Costumed adults always struck me as somewhat ‘unseemly’ — an idea I likely formed in High School when my classmates would all dress as hobos, hop in their cars, and drive to the rich neighborhoods in hopes of scoring ‘higher quality’ candy. And seriously, does anyone visiting their proctologist feel any less trepidation when a blood-drenched zombie asks for your insurance card?
But that was then. And this is now. And I’ve got a whole new take on Halloween.
I first softened to the day when my wife, a woman of seemingly endless talent, began to carve an annual Halloween pumpkin. I used to equate pumpkin carving with butchery. Essentially, using the biggest and sharpest knife in my kitchen, I would hack out a couple of triangular eyes and a grotesquely toothy grin — all the while hoping the handful of butterfly bandages in my medicine cabinet would effectively close my inevitable gaping knife wound.
So that first year, when she informed me that she would carve a pumpkin, I made certain to pick up a fresh box of bandages during my annual late-October druggist run. I needn’t have bothered. In her hands, pumpkin carving became an art form rather than an act of savage ritualism. And with each passing year, I found myself actually looking forward to Halloween and to her pumpkin carvings.
My wife’s pumpkin carvings cracked open the door to my potential Halloween re-indoctrination. But it was “street” photography that kicked it off its hinges.
Those of us who photograph the human experience spend 364 days a year trying to be ‘the invisible man.’ But for one glorious day each calendar year, we street photographers can drop our disguise, emerge from the shadows, and proudly hold our cameras aloft. All Hallows Eve is our night. It’s the night when man’s silliness bubbles to the surface and begs to be photographed. It’s a night when bashfulness is banished and even the werewolves carry cameras. It’s a night when a demure damsel can throw caution to the wind and dare be photographed on the arm of a superhero.
Halloween is the night when guardians of the velvet rope relax their nightclub’s homogenous patron policies, and accept all types: hillbillies, post-apocalyptic warriors, spacemen, Roman Goddesses, and masked avengers. Halloween is, quite frankly, the easiest pickins a street photographer can get. It’s our Labor Day, Christmas, and Thanksgiving all rolled into one.
Decades removed from childish notions that equate Halloween with candy, I’ve come full circle. Halloween is, once again, all about the candy — but this time, it’s candy for the eye. And, like a child with a bucketful of treats, I’ll spend the next several weeks rummaging through the disk full of photographs I scored on Halloween night. Halloween is no longer just another date on my calendar — it’s a date circled in red. And all the other dates are just days ‘tween the ‘weens.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
