Photographs, Photographers and Photography

How things change

The addition of the Panasonic Lumix LX-1 to my equipment earlier this year, replacing my rangefinder Leicas, brought with it something new and exciting, over and above the superb overall capability of this pocketable digital camera.

An exceptionally wide image aspect ratio, meaning the ratio of height to width. The Panasonic uses a 16:9 sensor, which is identical to the format of most contemporary movies or, stated differently, 1:1.78.

Looking back over the past century but a handful of aspect ratios have dominated photographic images, or at least in-camera originals. None has been this wide.

Early plate and large format cameras used 3 1/4” x 4 1/4” film or 1:1.31. The 4” x 5” format, 1:1.25, popularized a whole range of printing papers in like ratio – contacts, 8” x 10” , 12” x 15” and 16” x 20”. Until digital came along most photographic prints were made in these ratios, because that’s how the paper was sold and that’s how frame and mat manufacturers made their products. In other words, close to square.

The story has it that when Oscar Barnack, the Leica’s inventor, was ruminating on how best to transition from a hernia-inducing field camera to something pocketable (boy, would he have loved modern digital point-and-shoots or what?) he decided to make the film frame 24mm x 36mm, or 1” x 1.5”, to reduce the grain effect of the movie film stock he had decided to use. A movie frame was a scant 18mm x 24mm and old Oscar decided, rightly, that that was just too small to permit a decent enlargement. So he doubled the size and thus was the famous Leica format born with an aspect ratio of 1:1.5, in contrast to the far squarer 1:1.33 of the movie original.

Of course, his efforts were, for the large part wasted, as printers were stuck in the 1:1.25 rut, so 17% of Barnack’s negative area was thrown away through cropping at the printing stage. Too bad he didn’t elect 24mm x 30mm, thus increasing the number of shots on a roll to 43 from 36, rather than wasting all that film.

Some photographers, most notably Henri Cartier-Bresson, made a fetish out of necessity, insisting that the composition of their originals was so perfect in every way on that long Leica negative that any French printer who would dare even think about cropping the negative would be deported to England, there to suffer a life sentence known as English cuisine. Truth be told, if you look at any book of Cartier-Bresson snaps and hack a bit off the long dimension, the picture loses nothing at all in power. Hey, don’t knock the artifice, it worked for him, no?

Brassai, extroverted Hungarian that he was, threw convention and aspect ratios to the wind and thought nothing of cropping one good picture into two or three even better ones. Viva Brassai!

So Cartier-Bresson’s and Leitz’s predilections notwithstanding, 1:1.25 pretty much ruled the roost for most of the twentieth century. Add television, which adopted much the same ratio for its first fifty years, and you have a critical mass hard to overcome. Shame, really, because it’s a really boring look. Too bad few photographers learned anything from that great nineteenth century beachscape painter Eugene Boudin who though nothing of painting on canvases which were 1:2 or even longer in aspect ratio. He was doing nothing more than using a shape to fit the subject.

Boudin does Boudin

Towards the end of the twentieth century, home ink jet printers became affordable in even fairly large sizes, and for whatever reason someone decided that the carriage would allow a paper width of 13” and someone else came up with a paper length of 19”. That just happens to work out to 1:1.46 so I like to think that inventor was a Leica man or the spirit of a much put-upon French printer had inveigled itself into the design process, because now the loss from a Leica negative was a mere 3%. HC-B could rest in peace, and given that a well printed ink jet print is indistinguishable from a wet process one, everyone was happy. I love the 13” x 19” format, finding it large enough to hang on the wall and long enough to afford the option of keeping everything in those many years of Leica negatives. It has become my default print size, replacing 8″ z 10″ for proofing purposes.

Before we segue to the current millennium it would be unfair to make no mention of the square format, beloved of Rolleiflex and Hasselbald users. Of course they never printed square prints, but take away the decision whether the camera should be held this way or that and you have one less variable interposed in the creative process. So, I suppose, that’s a good thing. Nonetheless, hack it down to 1:1.25 and the 56mm square Hasselblad negative promptly lost 20% of its surface area as the cost of this flexibility, though it was still more than 3 times the effective surface area of the Leica. So, for the most part, printers at Vogue and Harpers Bazaar hacked away, but at least one photographer decided to transmute this limitation and make of it an affectation. That photographer is Michael Kenna, and he resolutely prints most of his work in a square format. I’ll leave it to you to decide about his work, but if 1:1.25 is boring, then 1: 1 is near catatonic when it comes to visual interest.

I’m not sure what possessed Panasonic to adopt the 1:1.78 in the LX-1 (16:9 in common parlance, Europeans and Japanese preferring to put the long side first), but Hollywood had been transitioning to like-format widescreen movies for years and, guess what, Panasonic happens to be a major manufacturer of television sets. Visit your high street big box store today and you will find that more than half the TV sets are 1:1.78 and, making a virtue out of necessity, the ads scream ‘Widescreen’. Five years earlier the only widescreen display you could find was limited to megabucks home theater installations with overhead projectors. ‘Pan and scan’, where movies are chopped or scanned to fit the 1:1.25 or 1:1.33 screen is butchery indeed and a 1:1.78 screen fits the new sets perfectly, at the expense of black bars on older 1:1.33 movies. A good trade. Just try watching Sergio Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West on a regular TV and you will wonder why this is considered by many to be the greatest Western ever made; switch to Widescreen and all is clear.

And for me, the widescreen format in the LX-1 is simply a revelation. I’m finding that I have to relearn how I think about pictures, just as I have to when making circular QTVR panoramas. Now I have no idea how to describe the aspect ratio of a QTVR 180 degree x 360 degree panorama, but it sure as hell isn’t 1:Anything!

Pindelski does Boudin

I’m beginning to learn to photograph and print in widescreen and my next order of mats and boards from the wonderful people at Documounts will, you guessed it, have some 18” x 32” and 13” x 23” mat openings. They will cut any size you want, though these custom sizes command a small premium to all that 1:1.25 stuff. More of that later.

For this photographer this seemingly small change in aspect ratio has opened up new vistas indeed.

You know, the things in the back of drawers you haven’t seen for ages

As I clear out the last of my film equipment I find I am still left with a lot of, well, stuff. None of this has much value and the effort-to-dollars-realized ratio is not very exciting but, having sold off most of the big dollar items, what am I to do? Throw these things away? Even if my time is worth more spent on other things, I feel a duty of care to these once seemingly indispensible gadgets.

Let’s see.

There is that wonderful Leica MC selenium cell meter which I bought some 35 years ago. It would clip to the top of my Leica M2 or M3 , couple to the shutter speed dial and provide accurate light readings whenever asked. Selenium cells, which need no battery, are meant to die from age but this one was always stored in the dark when not in use and remains as accurate today as it was over three decades ago. It’s the same one clipped to QE2’s M3 in that famous stamp where she can be seen holding the camera. Yes, she was an M3 gal back then. Now you should understand that she never paid for hers. No, she didn’t pinch it. Rather, Leitz, recognizing she was more German than English, honored her bloodline with, yes, you guessed it, a free one with her initials on it, no less! Sold for $40 (the meter, not the Queen).

Or how about that wonderful, inverted cone hood that Leitz concocted around 1971? By inverting the cone and venting the rear, the amount of the hood intruding into the field of view, especially noticeable with the wide angle M2 viewfinder with the older design, became a thin line which you barely noticed after a while. Brilliant. $38.

Then there’s that superb Schneider 8x loupe used to check negatives or slides for sharpness before committing all that time to scanning them. For reasons best known to themselves, Schneider replaced the 8x and only sell a 4X which is not powerful enough to tell you much. A superb tool and indispensible for the film user, if of no use to a digital photographer. $90.

Next up is that sweet little Japanese Kopil self-timer – useful for those cameras like my unlamented Leica M6, which had none, or whenever a jar-free release was needed and no cable release was to hand. No use for that with modern equipment, what will all those options which include what color you want your coffee. $13. It served me well indeed.

Here’s one of the funkier items, though none the less useful for that. A Leica lens coupling ring, allowing two M lenses to be attached back-to-back for space efficient storage in the camera bag. Just be careful you don’t ram that $3,000 21mm Asph Elmarit in there, as expensive grinding sounds will testify to rear element-to-rear element contact! Big bucks for this one – $35.

And while we are on the topic of funky, what about this little gadget? It fits around the rewind knob of a Leica M2 or M3 which, in its absence, is a device designed by Torquemada and his boys, and guaranteed to flay the skin from your thumb and index fingers as you rewind the film into the cassette. A process which takes about a day, by the way. Strange that one camera, the Leica M2, can have both the best and worst designed components at the same time. This jewel, fastened with a set screw, rises with the rewind knob and gives you proper leverage to do a painless and speedy job. Much sturdier than the fragile 45 degree rewind crank that first saw the light of day with the Leica M4. How quaint rewinding film seems now. Another $30. When Leica made their ‘retro look’ MP a couple of years ago, they fitted it once more with that silly rewind knob, then immediately started offering these for $180 as an accessory. No kidding!

What about that cute Olympus Stylus Quartz Date, a clamshell design 35mm point-and-shoot with a 35mm Olympus lens, auto everything, and truly pocketable? This one went around the world with me several times. Lucky if I get $30 for it.

Now for the heavy artillery. There’s that Leica Bellows, modelled on the Golden Gate when it comes to rigidity, which was the bee’s knees in close-up gear thirty years ago with your Leica M and the Visoflex mirror housing. Beyond gorgeous in construction and I still cannot seem to unload this one, a bargain at $80, which includes a couple of beautifully machined adapters.

Next a couple of whoppers. First the 200mm Telyt, an f/4 lens of wonderful sharpness and zero automation. You have to stop down by hand though, in its defence, it fits just about anything out there with the right adapters – Visoflex I, Visoflex II/II, any number of SLRs and, yes, you guessed it, even DSLRs. $179 doesn’t seem a lot, even though it has seen better days. Why sell? Well, when you have a Canon 200mm L, with auto aperture, auto focus and a stop faster to boot, why torture yourself?

Finally, the piece de resistance, the wonderful 400mm trombone focus Telyt. Sure, I have adapted this to my Canon 5D and it works fine in auto aperture priority mode; the snag is that I take one 400mm picture once in a blue moon, and frankly for those occcasions, the sensor in the 5D is so good that a simple enlargement from a snap taken with the 200mm f/2.8 L is every bit as good, with far less bulk and full automation. Beyond mint this one and superb in every way, it’s a bargain at $645, original box, shoulder brace, the whole megillah.

Now hang on a minute. That little lot, if it all sells, adds up to some $1,000+. Now I don’t need any more equipment, as I have all I need. Then again, a few more books with photographs never hurt….

Change or die.

I mentioned a while back that my dear mother-in-law had asked for help in selling a couple of film cameras on eBay. Now while eBay may be a conduit for some of the least honest people on earth – the sponsor smartly gets to act as innocent broker sloughing off responsibility for combating fraud on cheated buyers – it is nonetheless one of the more effective venues for getting rid of junk. Chances are good that someone out there wants it.

I admit I was a tad shocked at the dear relative’s lack of loyalty to these fine machines. But I know her to be a wise woman so I started reflecting on her decision.

The two cameras concerned were a mass produced and totally uninteresting (to collectors, at least) Canon Rebel and a much more collectible Kodak Medalist II which, owing to its strange appearance and bulk, makes the grade as an instant display piece. One immensely capable the other, well, just immense.

Arguably you would not want to use either to take pictures. The Rebel is surpassed handily by its digital descendants whereas the Medalist is really not competent in a world of 10 megapixel sensors and fabulous lenses, if you can even find film for it.

Knowing this I realized that my task would not be an easy one; however, as I am a big believer in the old saying that has it that you have to spend money to make money, I fitted the Rebel with two sets of new batteries (one for the data back, the other for the camera) and ran a roll of film through it, the better to show prospective buyers the quality this combination could produce. You can probably say with reasonable certainty that this will be the very last roll of film I will expose in my lifetime.

The Medalist could not be accorded like treatment as I could not find 620 format film in time, but it would appeal to a display collector, I reckoned, rather than someone looking for a daily user. All I did here was to clean it up and take a nice set of display pictures showing this magnificent piece from every conceivable angle.

To cut a long story short, both cameras sold, albeit neither attracted much interest. It’s the low selling price of the Rebel – $65 including new batteries, three rolls of film and a nice Canon carryall – that prompts this journal entry. Here, after all, was a camera that was selling a handful of years ago for what? $250? $300? The one I sold for my mother in law had probably seen a dozen or two rolls of film through it and was as close to mint as it gets. Like the proverbial Cadillac owned by the Little Old Lady from Pasadena of days past. In other words, thanks to digital, the Canon, a camera of great flexibility and yielding fine negatives, had depreciated some 80% in the blink of an eye.

It occurs to me that this sort of thing doubtless happened in previous generations where a technological breakthrough had obsoleted or bankrupted a predecessor technology.

Old man Gutenberg and his press did a number on all those Benedictine monks who had the market in illustrated manuscripts well and truly cornered. Being a pretty smart lot, however, (and I admit to bias here, having been educated by them), they went where the money is. Meaning booze. Benedictine Dom Perignon invented the cork stopper, making transportable champagne a reality and the now unemployed Benedictine artists transitioned to making Benedictine liquer, making many happy and themselves rich. Nice transition. And say what you may about religion, there’s a lot right with a bunch of chaps that knows a good liquer or glass of champagne.

That was then, this is now. An illustrated Benedictine manuscript fragment

In medicine the local barber gave way to penicillin, the surgeon and his anesthetics. The latter, in turn, is fighting a losing battle against smart pharmaceutical chemists who are rapidly obsoleting the scalpel with their targeted drugs. Amen for that.

The Ford Model T did a number on the horse and buggy business. You now enjoy a horse as a recreational avocation, flaunting the key rule of not owning something that eats as you sleep.

The light bulb did it to candles. The latter now serve as a backstop when lightning hits the local generator and provide continuing work for the local fire brigade and insurance adjuster.

Newsprint is where film was a few years ago. Meaning scared and about to die. The computer with a properly targeted news reader application will allow a user to digest hundreds of stories daily where in the past he might read that many on a topic of choice in a week.

Hundreds of stories at a glance. The NetNewsWire news reader on an iMac.

The main street movie house is in the early throes of death, replaced by the DVD which, in turn, will soon yield to downloadable movies. No need to leave the armored compound you call home.

The iPod killed the CD.

Those are some of the big wrecking technological changes that immediately come to mind. Back to the topic of photography.

Digital changed photography more than any technological change since Kodak’s ‘You press the button, we do the rest’. Actually, that was not so much a technological change – after all Kodak was selling cameras pre-loaded with roll film which technology had been around for a time – as it was a brilliant marketing change. Place the customer first (something Kodak has long since forgotten) and the world will beat a path to your door. In like manner, the iPod made better that which already existed, made it easy to use and made it sexy. The photographer uses the latter as a temporary storage device for his digital pictures which are overflowing the storage card in the camera on that extended trip. When he’s not listening to his tunes or watching movies on the same device, that is. So now Apple has changed that old Kodak dictum and it reads “Your press the button, you do the rest”.

And with this change in photographic technology I believe a new behavioral set of circumstances has come to pass. Namely, that brand loyalty is, for the most part, a thing of the past.

In the old days a serious photographer was a Leica man or a Zeiss man or a Rolleiflex man (sadly, few women were allowed into the club). Later he became a Nikon or Minolta or Pentax or Canon man. Or woman. He swore by Kodak or Agfa or Ilford film. For his dad, it had been GM or Ford. They had not let him down in the past and were not about to do so now, having grown with him.

Look at the exquisite care Leitz, for one, took with transitioning its many happy users from the anachronistic screw mounting of lenses on bodies with simply awful viewfinders and ergonomics to match, to the fast and infinitely more capable bayonet mount and magnificent finder of the Leica M. Though the first bayonet Leica, the M3, came out in 1954, Leitz was releasing the latest in its line of screw bodied cameras as late as 1957, finally discontinuing it in 1960. Forward lens compatibility was also assured – what better way to preserve the value of that investment? – so the M body was one millimeter thinner, allowing a screw to bayonet adapter to be fitted while preserving infinity focus. And gradually those old pipe smoking fuddy duddies at the camera club came to realize that maybe a lever film advance and the world’s best integrated view/rangefinder weren’t such bad things after all.

Their modern descendants are the same folks who deny the reality that film is in its last innings. But Leica, in its clever marketing, had managed to preserve a past generation of users, making them upgrade, and attracted a whole new generation who saw the M for the superbly capable instrument that it was. Brand loyalty, in other words, was well used. Whether they get away with it again with the ridiculously overpriced and soon-to-be-obsolete Leica M8 remains to be seen. They had better watch out – those M bayonet patents are long expired.

Now fast forward to 2006. At the beginning of the year I was a Leica M loyalist of some 35 years standing. Newer Ms had come along – truth be told none were as well made as the M2 and M3 I had been using for all that time – but there was no reason for ‘upgrading’, if an upgrade it really was. I tried an M6 and found the rangefinder worthless pointed into the sun. Those on the M2 and M3 worked fine. That’s what happens when accountants take over from engineers. The lenses got better and better, true, so I upgraded those, but when something better came along it would clearly not be from the house of Leitz, or Leica as it had become. It happened to be from Canon in the guise of a (barely) affordable full frame sensor in the EOS 5D DSLR which instantly obsoleted all my medium format gear. I couldn’t sell the latter fast enough before it became worthless. Bye bye, Rollei.

And had you told me that I would make my daily user a camera which was made by a consumer appliance maker – the Panasonic LX1 – and that this would replace none other than the vaunted Leicas, well, I would probably have had serious doubts about your sanity. And that was just a few months ago. Panasonic had made a better mousetrap, Canon had made the best, near grain-free sensor in the business and brand loyalty simply made no sense. So when my mother-in-law wisely wrote to me, in response to my email agonizing about selling the Leicas, with just three words, I knew there was more than a grain of truth in what she wrote.

“Ain’t Change Wonderful?”

Let’s extrapolate that thinking for a moment. The other day I watched a brief Sony promotional video on YouTube where a charming Sony technologist was extolling the virtues of the new Sony Alpha A100. I have spoken highly of this camera, based on its paper specifications, in the past, not least because it is a rebadged Minolta with Sony’s capital and genius behind it. What do you think the smart Japanese engineer said on that video? Why, he took a leaf straight out of Leica’s book. “Just think”, he said, “there are six million Minolta lenses out there that will fit our camera”. Respect the past while selling the future. It was not lost on me, either, that each of those six million lenses had just got two new leases on life, courtesy of a digital sensor and a vibration reduction mechanism built into the body of the camera.

So one day soon someone comes along with a sensor as fine grained as Canon’s in a much smaller package (it does not have to be full frame if the quality is there). The camera has vibration reduction built into the body, not the lens. The viewfinder has focus confirmation for manual focus lenses just like some Pentax DSLRs. Now my tired eyes can see when things are sharp as the little light comes on. And the mount will respect the legacy of the past by being Nikon or Canon or Minolta or Pentax, or even Leica M. For all those tens of millions of lenses out there. And maybe that brilliant manufacturer somehow obsoletes the flapping mirror and pentaprism with a crisp, straight through electronic viewfinder with no ghosting and high contrast. So much cheaper and more reliable than all those mechanical parts.

And what do you think I will do? Why, dump the Canon and move on, of course.

As they say on Wall Street, “If you want loyalty, get a dog”. And I already have one of those.

Bert the Border Terrier. Loyalty personified, unless a cookie is involved, that is.