Photographs, Photographers and Photography

July 31, 2008

More NYC architecture

Filed under: Photographs — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:59 am

Carnegie Hall’s west elevation along Seventh Avenue always reminded me of what a steel mill might have looked like in that brilliant Scotsman’s era:


Carnegie Hall. Pentax ME Super, 135mm Takumar, Kodachrome 64.

1920s buildings are hard to improve upon:


Low-fifties, west side. Pentax ME Super, 135mm Takumar, Kodachrome 64.

Go back a few more decades and Tribeca has some lovely old iron warehouse buildings, now all converted to expensive lofts, with soaring ceilings and huge windows – the Carnegie mills probably provided much of the building materials for these:


Iron-framed building in Tribeca. Pentax ME Super, 28mm Takumar, Kodachrome 64.

If the politics of big buildings interest you, try Paul Goldeberger’s book Up from Zero which goes some way to explain why, seven years after 9/11, Manhattan has yet to see the first brick laid in rebuilding the World Trade Centers.

July 30, 2008

Lightroom 2

Filed under: Lightroom — Thomas Pindelski @ 10:02 am

A feature comparison.

With the release of Lightroom 2, Adobe has published a useful feature comparison to Version 1 – click here.

I’m not upgrading right now, respecting my ‘Never Buy Version 1.0 of anything’ rule. Further, as I do not do a lot of image processing, the enhanced controls in v2 don’t do that much for me. 64 bit support? Meaningless to me from a practical perspective.

As for Lightroom 1.4.1, which is what I currently use, I couldn’t be happier. It’s fast, doesn’t lose images and printing is a dream. I’m beginning to wonder whether Aperture will be orphaned soon – a small user base (Mac only), a bog slow application unless you spend $$$ on hardware and very buggy implementation will not see me back with that flawed product.

July 29, 2008

Pictures from my Window

Filed under: Photographs — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:05 am

More on architectural photography.

Ruth Orkin was a Manhattan based photographer who just happened to live in an apartment in the Dakota at 72nd and Central Park West. From that location, overlooking Central Park, she took many pictures though the seasons, the whole glorious project being enshrined in her book:

The idea that a slice of Central Park constitutes “The World” is a uniquely New York kind of arrogance, but we can let it go. The photography is superb. It’s out of print at Amazon so try your favorite remaindered or used bookseller for this one.

Seeing as I lived at 56th and Eight when in Manhattan, my views were not as pastoral as Orkin’s but fascinating nonetheless. My windows faced south (you could see the Hudson and Sixth Avenue’s boxy skyscrapers) and East (where the money was).

The first thing you saw looking east was the Mutual of New York building, replete with multi-purpose meterological indicators. Between the digital display and the mutli-colored spire and the star on top you were meant to be able to divine temperature, humidity, rain, sun or snow and, needless to say, the thing was wrong 90% of the time. But it was lots of fun to look at and photograph.


MoNY in winter. Pentax ME Super, 28mm Takumar, Kodachrome 64.


MoNY in the spring. Same data as above.

July 28, 2008

Architectural photography

Filed under: Book reviews — Thomas Pindelski @ 6:42 am

An under-appreciated field.

While I cannot remember a time when I did not think about photography on a daily basis, an interest in architecture did not seriously take seed until the age of 29. That was the year I moved to New York City. While its inherent bias on the editorial pages sadly infects the news reporting in the New York Times, no such favoritism was evident in the writings of Paul Goldberger and Ada Louise Huxtable. Their topic was architecture.

Before I knew it I was attending lectures by prominent architects, fascinated by the melding of big business, art and massive budgets with all the related logistical complexity which is what results when you try to build in New York. I mean, look at the realities. Those seeking to do you harm include the Mob (concrete to this day costs 20% more in NYC than anywhere else), the City of New York (relatively cheap to buy, after the Mob is accounted for), Albany, Washington and just about every other government apparatchik you can think of. The only difference between the Mob and the government is that the latter wrote the laws. If you can make a tall building in Manhattan you can make one with impunity anywhere.

Absorbing Huxtable’s and Goldberger’s teaching I cemented my relationship with architecture by visiting Chicago for the first time. Simply stated, Chicago’s finest buildings are to Manhattan what Ferrari is to GM. But New York’s winters were tough enough, thank you, so it wasn’t as if I was about to move there, much as I love the people of the mid-west. And those writers’ teachings made an indelible expression. Give me those charming moments of partial consciousness that define falling asleep and, likely as not, you will find my mind straying to New York City architecture.

You can say an awful lot about a building by measuring your desire to touch it. Not metaphysically. Walk up to it and touch it. And for me there were always three which made that distinguished cadre. The Flatiron Building. Philip Johnson’s AT&T. And Seagram. Johnson again.

So bad did this habit become that I made a point of walking past the last two on the way home just to be able to brush them with my fingertips. Maybe some of the magic would rub off?

No secret that I would make special efforts to entertain clients at lunch in the Four Seasons at the plaza level of Johnson’s Seagram masterpiece. From there I could gaze at the no less wonderful Lever House, airily perched on stilts on the west side of Park Avenue. It was my privilege to watch AT&T grow from my 40th floor office in the so-high-tech Citicorp Center, sloping roof for solar panels and all. Still not installed last I checked. Like the corporation, the architecture was crass, vulgar and ethically challenged. AT&T was so beautifully made that you just had to touch it. And they had that Apollo chap in the lobby, all gilded, with massive transatlantic cables draped about him.

As for the Flatiron, forget about all those schoolboy statistics about it being the tallest, the first with a steel frame, the first with elevators, etc. All you had to know was that Stieglitz had photographed it in 1903.

I was lucky to be reminded of all of this by the loan of a book on architectural photography from my dear mother-in-law. There, on page 113, Stieglitz’s masterpiece of the Flatiron is annotated thus:

Stieglitz’s ethereal view of the Flatiron, taken with a hand-held camera, typifies the Pictorialist approach to architecture.

That got my attention. I am of that school, after all. And here is that snap:

The book is Building with Light by Robert Elwall. American architecture is remarkably well represented (the author is the Curator of the British Architectural Library) with not a trace of condescension, and the whole 240 page tome is a breathtaking survey of architectural photography from the early nineteenth century through today. (Note: Architectural photography has not improved in the last 150 years).

Some of my favorite images are, unsurprisingly, from California residential architecture. Shulman and Neutra are amply represented as they adapt the new international style to a smaller scale. The photography changes too. What was once formal documentation is now pure pictorialism. It’s the effect of the building, not its technical detail, that fascinates.

Sieglitz would be proud.

All of which gives me two suggestions. First, get the book if buildings speak to you. Second, stay tuned for some of my architectural pictures ….

July 27, 2008

Photography podcasts

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:35 am

Choices are growing.

There are more and more photography related podcasts, all free, available in the iTunes store, for viewing on your computer, iPod or TV. I watch these on our TV using an AppleTV to download them. Some are in ‘enhanced’ mode, meaning you can see pictures as the sound track runs.

Simply go to iTunes->Podcasts and search for Photography as shown above. Quality is all over the place, but it’s easy to filter down to what you like after hearing an episode or two.

There are also more Photoshop podcasts than you can shake a stick at:

There is now so much material out there that whether you are seeking to learn a new application or simply looking for creative ideas, there is no shortage of choices.You can download a free copy of iTunes for either Macs or PCs from Apple.

July 26, 2008

Canon sensors and the 5D

Filed under: 5D — Thomas Pindelski @ 10:45 am

Old but still topical.

I came across these two on my hard drive – both white papers were released by Canon about the time of the 5D’s debut and still make fascinating reading.

Download either PDF by clicking the pictures below.

Both are fairly lengthy, with the first having an especially interesting discussion of the development of CCD and CMOS sensors, clearly explaining the differences.

Why publish this now when the 5D is about to be updated and obsoleted? Because if you can live with the modest maximum framing rate and the absence of dust removal, I believe the 5D lightly used market will be flooded with cameras from upgraders and will, as a result, offer an enticing opportunity to enter the world of full frame imaging at a very attractive price. If your print size is limited to 24″ x 30″, you cannot go wrong with this body and sensor – just don’t use Canon’s truly execrable cheap zooms on it. A good sensor deserves the best glass – primes if you can swing it as no zoom compares to a like prime for definition and overall performance. Plus most of Canon’s primes are far cheaper than their L zooms and are generally superb – I use the 20mm (not so superb), the 15mm fish eye, the 50mm f/1.4, the 85mm f/1.8 and the 100mm macro. The last four are as good as anything I have used at any price and run $300-400 new, with lots of used bargains out there.

July 24, 2008

Five criteria

Filed under: Cameras — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:14 am

What really matters when choosing a camera?

Twenty years ago I used three cameras most of the time.

A Leica M3, a Rollei 35 and a Rolleiflex 3.5F. You could not find three more different pieces of equipment, with fitness for purpose dictating that there should be three rather than one.

While I’m not that sure about the level of objective analysis which went into the buying decision, now that I think it through there were just five criteria dictating the choice of each. Those same five criteria apply today, though now I manage to get by with two cameras rather than three.

They are:

  • Speed
  • Bulk
  • Noise
  • Definition
  • Price and it’s bedfellow, fear.


British and proud of it, 1976. M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX.

It’s useful to keep these in mind when making the buying decision.

Speed means speed of operation. Back then the Leica was the street shooter without equal. A flip of the thumb advanced the film, the shutter was quiet (if not as whisper quiet as blinded Leica worshippers would have you believe; for that listen to a twin lens Rolleiflex), lens changes were fast and you were generally unobtrusive thanks to the blisteringly fast manual rangefinder focusing.

Bulk is an issue if you travel a lot and for that the Leica, small as it was, was simply too bulky. That’s where the Rollei 35 came in, with its collapsible lens, silent shutter and barely larger than a film cassette or two. Mine traversed the world many times and served me well, after the obligatory breakdown out of the box. Rollei’s Singapore craftsmen had yet to learn about quality control.

Noise and unobtrusiveness go hand-in-hand for the candid photographer, so the Leica’s quiet shutter did the trick.

Definition and freedom from grain became issues with any Leica enlargement greater than 8″ x 10″. For large smooth areas of sky or skin you had go to the next negative size, which came with the Rolleiflex 3.5F, maybe the finest camera ever to leave the factory of Franke & Heidecke. 16″ x 20″ (that was ‘big’ back then) was no problem with the Rollei TLR.

Price and fear are bedfellows. The Leica was expensive, the lenses more so, and you were always scared of getting mugged, whacked or otherwise resented or abused. Once the Japanese SLRs took over the 35mm market the fame of the Leica – and hence the ability morons had to recognize it – faded and with it the Fear quotient. But it was always there. Not for one moment did I care if someone pinched my Rollei 35 and the 3.5F was pretty much a studio camera.

These thoughts came to mind in discussions with a friend whose Canon Digital Rebel finally gave up the ghost and for which an urgent replacement was needed. Now this friend does the occasional wedding – surely there can be no field of photography more greatly imbued with the fear of failure – yet reliability simply did not come up in our talks, any more than it features in the list above. Bottom line is that all the better cameras from the big names are reliable in all but combat conditions. Rather, the focus of our discussion was on noise. You simply cannot have a DSLR machine-gunning away in a quiet church where a sacred ceremony is underway. When all was said and done, my friend opted for Canon’s 40D which would both take her existing Canon lenses and offers a ’silent mode’ in Live View whereby the mirror is moved out of the way and the LCD becomes the viewfinder. Not ideal as LCD viewfinders are genuinely awful, but when you hear how quiet the shutter is in this mode you might well conclude that the trade-off makes sense.

When buying my 5D I was much more studied about what I wanted than in days past. And because I no longer wanted to mess about with clunky medium format gear, I wanted the best possible definition out of a smaller package. On the other hand, I realized that small size was not consonant with that dictate, so my choice was pretty much limited to full frame digital. Further, I wanted my wide lenses wide, not cropped. Cropped sensors have improved greatly since then but 30 months ago the difference between Canon’s cropped and full frame sensors were significant, not least in their ability to hide noise at higher ISO settings. One look at the definition of the images, aided by some good, realistically priced lenses from Canon, suggested that the 5D could replace both 35mm and medium format film, and such proved to be the case. The ease of use of a 35mm SLR with the definition of medium format film. Sweet. I bought one. It was only one of two full frame DSLRs available, the other being Canon’s very expensive 1Ds.

And I was no longer particularly fixated on street snaps which, in any case, had become much easier to make as cameras became ubiquitous. No one cared if you pointed a camera at them.

So my priority order for the Five Criteria had changed.

Originally it was as listed above. Now it was:

  • Definition
  • Noise
  • Price and it’s bedfellow, fear.
  • Bulk
  • Speed

Definition was A Number One and Price now mattered – it irked me to have so much capital tied up in a hobby and I resolved to avoid that when changing equipment. Fear was not an issue – I stick black electrician’s tape over the obnoxious ‘Canon’ logos and go on about my unobtrusive way. Noise still mattered. The 5D is hardly ideal but it beats a Pentax 6×7 or a Rolleiflex 6003/6008, which sound like one of Krupp’s finest when they go off. Bulk worked out well. The 5D is not small but any time you get medium format film quality in a 35mm SLR package, buy it and run. Price never mattered. It’s not that I’m Rockefeller but judicious buying and a disciplined approach to life makes the price shock that much less noticeable. This is one of my key interests after all, not a passing fling. And as with Porsche drivers, you get two kinds – those who love the gear and those who can drive. I’ll let you decide which camp I am in.

But I still need two cameras. When it comes to something pocketable which can go anywhere I use the Panasonic LX-1. Sure, it has lots of limitations (needs a viewfinder, shutter lag, grainy/noisy images) but so did the Rollei 35. But it more than suffices in those times when you simply cannot haul the 5D around.

My two cents worth of advice suggest that you make a like list prioritizing your needs then choose the camera which is the best match. Forget about brands. The major makes offer so much choice that it does not have to be Canon or Nikon – just choose something that scores most on your short list of essentials. That way the noise of brand loyalty (a dumb idea if ever I heard of one) is silenced. And do not discount the idea of more than one camera. Horses for courses and all that.


Antiques, 2006. 5D, 24-105L, IS on, 1/30, f/6.3, ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom.

July 22, 2008

Cutting your losses

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 9:46 am

As in getting emotion out of the equation.

As a money manager and investor one of the key disciplines I adopt is one of cutting my losses. For the most part if a stock hits a predetermined drop off the highest price I have owned it at – this may be after a few days or few years of ownership – it is unceremoniously sold. The old saying that ‘buy-and-hold’ is the only long term investment strategy capable of success is bunk. Great for twenty year bull markets, like the one that just ended, but dumb as they come otherwise. (Money managers love it as it annuitizes their management fees from the boobs who buy in). Imagine, you lose 30% in a quarter on a position but you gut it out and hold on. It may take you five years or more to recover those losses, garnering you a 0% return over that period. The disciplined seller, meanwhile, has limited his loss with a trailing stop percentage order at 7-10%,moving on to better things.

A disciplined exit strategy is consonant with success in all areas of life. How many of us know people who have remained for far too long in an abusive relationship but dare not venture into alternatives? Years of happiness lost. The sell discipline applies as equally in emotional as in financial matters.

When it comes to photographic hardware I believe the same applies. Unless you absolutely love the whole processing/retouching/slow turnaround cycle of film, for example, you are simply crippling your competitiveness compared to the guy with a good DSLR.

And lest I am accused of not following my own advice, let me clarify things.

For over thirty years – from 1973 through 2005 – I used one or more of these:


Yesterday’s news

While I tinkered with SLRs this worked for me and, in truth, if the optimal mix of quality lenses, a rugged body (well, reasonably so) and fast response was sought, the rangefinder M Leica was the only way to go.

Then, of course, digital came along and once sensor design settled down even those with poor eyesight (like me!) could see that film quality had not just been surpassed, it had been blown away. Add a 5 minute processing cycle as opposed to a seven day one and that was all she wrote. Time formerly spent on scanning, retouching, filing and on and on now became time wasted. And, like you, as every day shortens my life expectancy by 24 hours, why waste time?

So, a tad late in the day, I decided to apply my stock management philosophy to my photographic hardware. The goal was not so much to realize the best exit price for obsolete hardware – film cameras – though that is a nice side effect, but rather to maximize productivity through the use of modern technology, which is what technology is all about. Your time is worth far more than your hardware, so resale value is not the driver here. Anyone looking for long term appreciation from obsolete camera gear is probably waiting for the second coming, too. Could be a while.

Those Leica Ms, myriad Wetzlar lenses (all superb), a Leicaflex, Rolleis galore, a Mamiya or two, a couple of Pentaxes moved on. Paperweights. Digital had arrived and it was mature. Instead I spent some time learning how to properly profile my screen so that what I print matches, I moved to the very efficient Lightroom after struggling with the abomination that is Photoshop, paid up for a really great large format dye printer (the HP DJ90) and got on with the merry job of making pictures.


Today’s gear – ready to be dumped at a moment’s notice if need be

Do I miss all that great gear from the last throes of the mechanical age? Sure. You use the same Leica for 30+ years and tell me you don’t miss it. But the old Wall Street adage prevails, for it remains one of the great truths:

“If you want loyalty, get a dog”.

And my dog had better watch out. He crosses me and he’s outta here.

July 21, 2008

Modern Rothko

Filed under: Paintings, Photographs — Thomas Pindelski @ 10:20 am

Anyone can do rectangles.


Neo-Rothko. 5D, 24-105L at 105mm, 1/250, f/8, ISO 200, Image Align


Real Rothko

I love Rothko’s work, but it’s more decoration than art.

July 19, 2008

The problem with small sensors

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 1:37 pm

It’s the enlargement ratio.

A friend has set himself the goal of making good 13″ x 19″ prints from a 1/8″ sensor-equipped digital point-and-shoot. Look here and you can see the various sensor sizes. A so-called 1/8″ sensor is 7.2mm x 5.3mm. The more common cropped APS-C DSLR sensor is 22mm x 15mm (most DSLRs), whereas a full frame one is 36mm x 24mm.

So, to get to a 13″ x 19″ print, here are the enlargement ratios for the three sensor sizes:

1/8″ P and S: 65x (yes, 65x!)
APS-C: 21x
Full frame: 13x

Thus, that old 35mm film rule of thumb that you should use a shutter speed no longer than the reciprocal of the focal length (e.g. no longer than 1/500th with a 500mm lens) is nonsense. What’s good for a blur-free 8″ x 10″ print from a 24mm x 36mm negative is not the same as what is called for from the miniscule sensor in modern point-and-shoot digitals. Film just starts to lose it with a 35mm original at 13x enlargement. Full frame digital (based on my 5D) begins to struggle over 24x. Read on how to make the small sensor in a P&S work for you.

My rule of thumb is that the things that most contribute to – or detract from – a good big print are, in decreasing order of importance:

  • Absence of camera shake (solution: tripod, IS, fast shutter)
  • Over exposure which generates noise and blows out highlights (I underexpose 1 stop)
  • RAW not JPG
  • Slow ISO
  • A good lens ($$$)
  • Sensor size (the bigger the physical size the better; forget megapixels)

You can do an awful lot to improve things with the small sensor. First, you need to record images in RAW, not JPG, thus bypassing the excessive smoothing small sensor cameras apply when generating JPGs. The only snag is that the camera concerned is Canon’s A720IS (8 megapixels – some $190 at B&H) and Canon does not include a RAW mode. They prefer to make that available in the far costlier G9 ($450) which has the same lens, the same sensor and replaces the plastic body with an alloy one.

Bad choice.

Metal provides far inferior shock absorption when dropped and will dent. Further, the added weight will simply increase contact force when dropped (force is mass x acceleration, so it’s directly proportional to weight in this example). A G9 is 11.3 ozs, the A720IS is 7.1 ozs, so when you drop the G9 it will suffer 60% more force on impact compared with the A720IS). Plastic is superior in every way in this application except that its light weight connotes poor quality. Wrong! More about serial dropping here.

No RAW in the cheaper camera? Just Google for Canon RAW hacks and you will find an installable hack that opens up the crippled firmware and gives you full RAW capability for a fraction of the price of the G9. The cheap camera has IS to reduce camera shake which, as the data at the start of this piece disclose, you really need to minimize to make big prints. The hack is free and allows all sorts of G9 features to be added to the A720IS.

So now we had RAW installed on the A720IS and could do JPG to RAW image comparisons.

Here they are – the print size equates to about 24″ on the long dimension:

In the two examples below, the RAW/DNG file is on the left (”Select”):


Edge detail. I could not recover the highlights any more in the JPG version.


Center detail. Even on a small computer screen, the increased sharpness of the RAW version is obvious.

Are the big prints as detailed as those on the 5D + Canon 100mm macro + ring flash, as discussed here? No. But absent an A-B comparison, you would be quite happy at 13″ x 19″, provided you refrain from really sticking your nose in them.

I have processed both to be as similar as possible. The detail differences are that the RAW original has superior dynamic range (better shadow and highlight details) and is far sharper given the absence of in-camera compression. With good originals, preferably underexposed by one stop, and bright lighting, a small sensor can produce decent 13″ x 19″ prints; turn down the light, make shutter speeds slower and add the need for a large aperture and, well, you are out of luck. A larger sensor is dictated.

Interested in screen display only? Any camera costing more than $150 is a waste of money, unless you must have a fast motor drive and need exotic lenses. Small computer screens will not show any difference otherwise. Save your money.

And if you need a very capable, small, inexpensive digital which will yield exhibition size prints, consider the Canon A720IS or cheaper variants (but do look for IS, as discussed above) and install the free RAW hack to really make your originals sing. I have no axe to grind for Canon and I’ll bet like results/hacks are to be had from most of the big names out there. My wife got one to replace her Canon Rebel DSLR (simply too bulky and heavy for her to carry around) and has found the shutter lag to be decent if not stellar.


Bargain of the year – the Canon A720IS.

The lens displays a fair bit of color fringing but a quick tweak in PS or Lightroom puts paid to that in short order. Plus you get a real optical viewfinder, not the abomination that is the LCD screen, though you get one of those too.

July 16, 2008

Spot the difference

Filed under: Cameras — Thomas Pindelski @ 9:32 am

Not pretty.

Money quote “I can’t think of any camera–or for that matter any electronic device I have recently used–that so thoroughly fails to live up to its potential and its heritage.”

If the name was not disclosed in this piece you would be hard pressed to tell whether the author – who strikes me as experienced and credible – was talking about Apple’s wireless technology or …. well, read it and see.

My vote is for Apple’s rushed-to-market, shoddy and undebugged wireless technology, but this photojournalist might differ. I should probably keep it under wraps, though, as my ‘free’ replacement MacBook’s wireless has now functioned flawlessly for 15 days – a new record.

July 15, 2008

Blue

Filed under: Photographs — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:12 am

With a dash of color.

It’s always fun to be around old warbirds.

July 14, 2008

Coming closer to God

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:05 am

A voice from above.

It never does to discuss politics, religion or sport in a journal of this nature as doing so simply invites insults. In a nation seemingly half of whose residents are born again something-or-other you can bet that religion, especially, will attract the worst in language.

So rather than dwell on it, let me just say that when it comes to religion I am a death bed conversion type. When I’m checking out I propose to welcome God to my soul with open arms. After all, the odds make no sense to deny His existence. If you are right and there is no God, fine, but if you are wrong, watch out. The believer, on the other hand, has the same chance of being right – 50/50 – but if he is wrong it matters not one whit. Dust to dust. If, on the other hand, he is right, it places him in a far better spot than the fellow who dies denying God’s existence.

Now during these summer months you will find me wandering across the upper driveway, vicious guard dog by my side, en route to the pump room. There I manually switch over a couple of water valves and push a button or two with the happy result that the zinfandel vines get their two gallons of goodness for the day. It’s an unyielding routine, based in the profit motive, and none too onerous at that.

But this morning was different. As Bert the Border Terrier and his master approached the pump room there was a massive rushing noise from the skies and a loud voice intoned ‘Good Morning’. Oh! Boy, I thought, I have finally bought it and a thousand thoughts of good Catholic guilt pulsed through my brain as I checked just how badly I had behaved before entering eternal life. The Border and I glanced skyward in supplication only to see:


Bertie and the balloon.

The balloon had descended to no more than twenty feet and the roar was from its flame as it sought to avoid an emergency landing on the old estate. Lucky they had fuel as the terrier was drooling at the mouth and generally displaying his normal killer guard dog style behavior. (Actually his tail nearly came off from excess wagging, but I live a fantasy life anyway). The pilot was so close we exchanged greetings (given that I was still in my jammies even a casual observer could but comment approvingly on my general air of insouciance) and he reassured me how gorgeous the view was from above.

I breathed a sign of relief and concluded my time here was not yet up on this best of worlds and that, hopefully, I would be enjoying the grape harvest in three months or so. And when you gaze on the beauty that is California, maybe there is a God after all?

July 13, 2008

Cataloging movies and books

Filed under: Software — Thomas Pindelski @ 9:28 am

An important source of inspiration.

I believe it’s important for any photographer to manage his sources of inspiration, be they books, magazines or movies. As is clear from yesterday’s journal entry, movies are an important source of ideas for my photographs so it’s important that all those DVDs are properly cataloged for easy retrieval.

In my case each DVD is labelled on the spine with a sequential number and that number is recorded as the location in the database. Movies are filed in numerical order – to arrange by title is futile in a growing library, as you will be constantly rearranging things.

For the past few years I have been using Delicious Library to do the database work but have become increasingly disappointed with its poor export capabilities and general slowness. When the new iPhone software was announced the other day it was immediately obvious that DL’s creators had dropped the ball and failed to deliver a capable iPhone export. Add the fact that you cannot network your DL data unless all networked computers use OS Leopard and I was ready for a change. Networking is important in my setup as the database is maintained on the office MacBook and then shared with the old iMac in the bar, where movies are looked up. The old iMac, no speed demon with a 1 gHz G4 CPU, is perfect for this sort of thing.

Along comes the uninspiringly named DVDpedia (at least the name is less dumb than ‘Delicious Library’ – a moniker which surely would make you question any product’s credibility) which not only offers a host of export formats, it also permits dynamic syncing with your iPhone once you download the related application to your phone. And, best of all, it’s very fast, far easier to use than DL (it feels like OS X’s Finder) and has an import function to bring in all your Delicious Library movies. The import works well. You really do not want to have to reenter everything manually if you have as many movies as I do – some 500 and counting.


‘Location’ refers to the movie’s number for easy retrieval


Apple’s superb Coverflow view is a built-in option if you use OS Leopard

You can see my library online in one of the many export formats by clicking on ‘Movies’ at the top right. Download is very fast.

A related product from the same vendor – Bookpedia (ugh!) – does the same thing for your book collection. In aggregate, the cost of these two applications is less than DL which integrates the movie and book cataloging functions. Click on Photography Books – My Library at the right and you will see a Bookpedia version of the photography books in my library.

Here is my Bookpedia library Syncd to the iPhone:


Touch any thumbnail for a full screen view of the cover

July 12, 2008

Learning monochrome

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:26 am

Everything I ever needed was in the movies.

I ceased taking monochrome pictures in 1977, though every now and then you still can catch me hitting the monochrome button in Lightroom.

But that’s not monochrome photography.

While the simplicity of seeing imposed by a monochrome palette makes anyone a better color photographer, I no longer take pictures thinking in black and white. My black may be red, my white blue, but I simply do not take black and white pictures.

Color is more challenging and, done right, more satisfying. Black and white, in a way, is cheating. Take out enough variables and anyone can do it. Not that all modern color is good. Anyone can paint a late Rothko or Motherwell. Fine work, true, but the genius of seeing and the skill to convert the vision to canvas are hardly abundantly on display here.

But when it was all I did, I loved black and white. No serious work in color was being shown by anyone in 1960 and that changed little through 1977. The pioneers, as ever, were the great fashion magazines, but the establishment critics saw to it that their art was disregarded. Shame. You could miss an awful lot of Parkinson, Clarke or Penn that way.

While my love of black and white was doubtless furthered by all those great books in the Kensington Public Library on Hornton Street, what really flipped the switch for me happened a good deal earlier when I first saw Carol Reed’s ‘The Third Man’ (1949) on our home TV which, of course, was black and white, like the movie. I was already familiar with that expressionist masterpiece ‘Metropolis’ by Fritz Lang, but this was on a far more approachable plane. It did not need much imagination to grasp Graham Greene’s plot or to be awed by the acting of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten. But what really gripped you was Robert Krasker’s photography, and rather than go on about it, I’m attaching nine favorite images from the movie. Krasker’s use of tilted perspective to convey an unwordly, wide angle look, is tremendous.

It’s not really clear on the small screen, but the next image shows the dying Harry Lime (Welles) poking his fingers up though the sewer grating as he tries to escape the good guys:

The camera cuts to his face. Sheer genius.

See what I mean?

July 9, 2008

Reassuring myself

Filed under: Hall of Shame — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:34 am

It just (mostly) works.

Much as I detest his products and will go out of my way to avoid them, I have tremendous admiration for Bill Gates and Microsoft. He is the greatest capitalist of our time and has created millions of jobs and thousands of millionaires.

What Gates realized was that it’s not a good product which sells well. Rather, it has to be a cheap product, no matter how poor. A related dictate in this marketing strategy is that first you have to wipe out the competition, much as Carnegie did with rival steel makers or Rockefeller accomplished with crude oil mining. All three were skilled monopolists. Carnegie and Rockefeller, though, made high quality products. Microsoft does not.

So astute was Gates in realizing where the path to riches lay that he didn’t even write the original DOS – it was purchased from a small company named Seatlle Computer for $50,000. The deal of the century. Why do it yourself when buying it is cheaper?

The mass consumer has, for decades, preferred cheap and execrable to good at a higher price. But he’s learning that lifetime ownership costs are far more important than the entry price. He twigged Detroit twenty years ago and started buying Japanese. He twigged Windows two years ago and started buying Macs. Why save a dollar or two when your most precious commodity – time – is wasted on the Microsoft product?

But, ironically, Gates has left behind the very seeds of Microsoft’s destruction. It’s called Vista and is so resounding a failure that Microsoft has felt it necessary to reneg on its promise to obsolete Windows XP and is now once more offering it as an option with PCs. Meanwhile Mac sales are up 39% year-on-year versus 12% for the industry as a whole. Apple can thank Vista for that.

It is still a mystery to me why any self-respecting photographer who values his time uses Microsoft computers. Given that the art of picture processing depends on uninterrupted focus on the image, not the technology, why would you use something perennially on the verge of failure?

With last week’s announcement that Beastmaster Bill has moved on, I reassure myself that I never got one of these when running my QC-challenged Apple hardware this past year:

Here it is updated for Vista:

And here is the Blue Screen Of Death in Coverflow – Apple makes it possible to scroll though your various BSODs:

So the greatest monopolist since J D Rockefeller has now moved on to fixing world hunger and disease. Now given that poverty is primarily a function of one thing – an absence of democratic institutions – you would think Bill Gates’s fortune would be better spent on overthrowing various and sundry African and Middle Eastern dictators, an effort which would cost a few $billion at most. But no. What does he do but try and fix world disease by buying medicines for the oppressed, when all they need is a vote? The fact that you were the best businessman of the last few decades does not confer intelligence in unrelated fields of endeavor.

On sad occasions I must admit to being a Windows XP user – on my MacBook with Parallels. I use XP – the least bad Microsoft operating system – which is required for certain investment management applications not available in native Mac form. Maybe one day Apple will realize there are many users of their Macs who actually have money to manage? Meanwhile, Parallels makes sure all those BSODs and nasty viruses remain locked up in their own little prison on my MacBook, never to pollute the happy world of my photographs. Like so, on my machine:

If you like Coverflow in Leopard, be assured it works great with 5D RAW originals too (it reads the JPG sidecar file so it is very fast). The CR2 files are from my Canon 5D:

Meanwhile, any photographer looking to shake the BSOD once and for all need only blow $1,100 on a bottom of the line MacBook, install his foul Windows garbage thereon, and gradually wean himself from a life of misery and dread.

What, you say, Vista is BSOD-proof? Watch and learn – appropriately this demo is on a Mac – it’s a remake of Gates’s rollout of Windows 95 years ago, right down to the words:

Meanwhile Microsoft pathetically tries to overpay for a broken Yahoo, seemingly forgetting the first rule of investment banking. “If you tie two rocks together, they still sink”. Too funny. Remain assured, Ballmer will cock-it up.

Microsoft – you are the prime and founding member of the Hall of Shame.

Disclosure: In Mac-land the BSOD is known as a kernel panic. Number of kernel panics suffered by this OS X user in the past five years: One. Four years ago. Also, variously long and short AAPL and MSFT over the years.

July 6, 2008

The Machines

Filed under: Photographs — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:28 am

A new web site addition.

Click the picture to jump to my web site for a show of the latest macro snaps of lovely old machines:

July 5, 2008

Bargain of the year

Filed under: 5D — Thomas Pindelski @ 7:57 am

The Canon 5D, that is.

The Canon 5D has now been on the market some three years. Mine, bought a few months after the introduction, cost $3,000 in 2006 money. Here’s B&H’s web site today:

Assuming 5% annual inflation (OK it’s really 15% but our government lies about it) I make that 40+% price drop, as the 5D Mk II replacement nears.

Given that, for this user, the difference between the Mark I and Mark II is a $10 sensor cleaning brush, given Mark I’s love of dust, that’s hardly a compelling reason to upgrade. After all, in the film days I made do with a 1960 Leica M3 for 30+ years, easily resisting the temptations of the M4/5/6/7 ‘upgrades’ which were less well made and cost a bundle. Sure, Mark II will have more pixels, but if I can get perfect large prints with Mark I why would I want one of these? The real enhancement digital sensors need is better dynamic range control and proper solution of that issue appears to be some way off yet. A smaller body like a Pentax DSLR would be nice, too, but I’m not holding my breath on that one. Recall that the small Olympus and Pentax film bodies – smaller than even cropped frame DSLRs today, were full frame snappers. I can only think that Macho Big outsells Chic Petite, hence the dearth of small DSLRs.

And for those looking to get into full frame digital at the lowest price, give Canon a short while to announce Mark II (likely identically priced as the new Nikon D700 competitor at $3,000) and you will be able to snap up a near mint used 5D for, what, $1,400 in the ensuing glut on the used market?

Just add $10 for that brush and you have the camera bargain of the year and large, sharp, grain-free prints to your heart’s content.


Bert the Border Terrier guards the latest batch of large prints from the 5D

Mark I shows every sign of being a decade-long keeper which, when you think about it, is an amazing statement given the rates of change in digital photography. It’s really that good.

July 4, 2008

Lest we forget

Filed under: Photography — Thomas Pindelski @ 10:49 am

The Declaration of Independence needs to be respected again.


John Trumbull. Declaration of Independence, with timely annotations.

First, we shoot all the lawyers …. then move on to the bums running California.

I’m off to take some snaps. Let’s hope the Pigs leave me alone this time. Just in case, I’ll take a fistful of used notes. Dollar notes.


Pigs. Leica M2, 35mm Summaron.

This Pig asked for my roll of film. I gave him an empty one. Pig.

Motto: Always carry a give-away roll of film or CF card on you.

Ink and paper supplies

Filed under: Printing — Thomas Pindelski @ 6:46 am

For heavy users.

I have made, and continue to make, many large prints on the Hewlett Packard HP90 Designjet printer. While it’s being phased out it remains broadly available if you do a Google search, typically selling for under $900. If you have priced other fade-free ink jet wide carriage printers, then you will know this is a superb bargain. Add a small desktop footprint and print quality to die for – and it works perfectly with Mac’s Tiger and Leopard OS – and you have a tremendous bargain. After some thirty months of use I would buy another at the drop of a hat if needs dictated.

Printers, however, are increasingly marketed using the Gillette razor model – give away the printer and clean up on the supplies. While HP has no need to give away a non-mass market device like the DJ90, ink and paper still take their toll on the budget if you make a lot of prints.

When it comes to consumables I have long been a believer in using the manufacturer’s recommended products. There’s little point in saving a dollar or two on refilled ink cartridges if the risk is that your printer heads clog up or the inks fade with age. With paper, I have found that HP’s Premium Plus photo satin is superb and maintains its surface sheen when the print is dry mounted at ~190F (88C) in a press. Much warmer than that and the surface looks less pleasant. While rumor has it that HP’s paper is made by Hahnemuhle in Germany, there’s little incentive to use aftermarket papers when each involves a tedious profiling and test session. So I stick with what works for me and now that I have digital’s dynamic range limitations under control, why bother with anything else? One more example where consistency takes out a complex set of variables from the equation. A good thing.

Given the need to have a spare cartridge of each of the six colors used in the HP (the printer uses ink frugally but you can bet you will run out when you least expect it), I found myself about to place an order at my photo retailer of choice, B&H in NYC, the other day. Then, what with the newly found need for frugality dictated by America’s total absence of an energy policy, I recalled that someone had mentioned a Florida vendor named Atlex. A quick click and comparison (3 ink cartridges and 40 sheets of 18″ x 24″ paper – $252 delivered to CA) disclosed that Atlex’s price was some 18% less than B&H’s. Now I like B&H and they have never let me down but 18% is non trivial. Loyalty to my pocket book wins every time. Atlex – their site claims they have been at it for over 25 years – also stocks Epson and Canon printer supplies, all original maker labelled, so what’s not to like? And, unless you live in Florida, you will be doing your bit by starving the beast that is government as you no longer pay sales taxes to the organized crime bosses masquerading as state government.

This is an opportune time to remind users not to mess with roll paper. Even if you have a proper roll paper holder and built-in cutting knife like in the HP DesignJet, life is simply too short to mess with severely rolled up paper supplies – just try to dry mount a print which prefers to roll up. I have tried. It was hell. Use cut sheets.

As for July 4th wishes, I’m the first to admit it’s a great occasion and one of great pride for this US citizen of 20 years, but common sense dictates that I will be keeping the English accent under wraps on that great day, making do with a few ‘Howdys’ and ‘Right-ons’ to keep things safe …. the last thing I need from Bubba is a “Go home” admonition.

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