Monthly Archives: May 2007

A Wii lesson for camera makers

Cameras, Photography

Simple is good – when will camera makers learn that?

After stentorian efforts to actually buy one, our experience with the Wii game console from Nintendo is nothing short of a revelation.

You open the box, plug it in, disregard the 500 warning messages to keep scum tort lawyers in their place, and play. Wave the controller about and the player on the screen moves in sync. The graphics are simple, verging on crude, the big instruction book can be disregarded and the result is insane fun!

Now I have to add that I do not play video games. Our son does, now. The above paragraph should have been written by him, except he is just five and his typing needs work. Come to think of it, he can’t read either. But just ask him if he enjoys his Wii.

Nintendo, like Apple, Thinks Different. Where Sony and Microsoft make game consoles of increasing complexity, with their sleazy back door attempt at taking control of your home computing, Nintendo focused on just a few things – ease of use, price and fun. Result? The competition is scrambling to emulate Nintendo’s wireless controller with its built in accelerometers and speakers. It will take them a year. The results won’t be pretty, thanks to Nintendo’s patents. First three month sales of the Wii exceed those of any other game console ever made. The stock has doubled in the past year. Get my drift?

So unless Nintendo or Apple decide to make a camera (I wish!), there’s a huge opening here for manufacturers looking to make a profitable entry into the market. Scrap all those silly buttons, LCD screens, largely useless zoom lenses, slow response times and poor ergonomics. Make the lens fixed. Add an optical viewfinder. Give it just one button – the one you click to snap the picture. Abolish shutter lag. So far that’s all like the Box Brownie of one hundred years ago on which, believe me here, the patents have expired. Put in a big sensor to ban image noise. Make it wireless to upload pictures to your computer. And, like the Wii, sell it for $299. Or $199. Or $99.

Happy users and profits follow. What am I missing here?

Beaton in the Sixties

Book reviews, Photographers

Book review

Taken in moderation, a sip here, a nibble there, these sixties diaries of Cecil Beaton are a blast to read. A sort of cross between the National Enquirer and the Tatler. Indiscreet, vicious, bitchy, funny, warm spirited, mean, generous, spiteful, the full panoply of human emotions, both good and base, is on parade for all to see here. And Beaton is rarely without his camera, conjuring up some new piece of fluff for all to enjoy.

If you like this sort of thing, and I wouldn’t put it on the recommended reading list without at least some prior exposure to his earlier, less gossipy writing, it’s a fun way to spend an afternoon.

Vision

Photographers

Hoppé got it right


Carmel, CA. M2, 35mm Asph, Gold 100, processed in Aperture

“The task of the artist is to develop his powers of perfection and sympathy, to bring a new vision of beauty and spiritual strength to a mechanistic age. This cannot be done in a darkroom or laboratory.”

E. O Hoppé, A Hundred Thousand Exposures. Focal Press, 1945.

The problem with P&S cameras

Cameras

Bottom line is, they all suck

Having just read another thoroughly depressing review of yet another Point & Shoot offering from a major manufacturer on the estimable DPReview.com, I have to wonder.

This one claims to be a top of the line offering. DPReview begs to differ, concluding that the camera has slow focusing and poor image sharpness, not to mention no RAW mode, a clunky interface and useless zoom range. It’s priced at some $350.

So why do these major manufacturers, and they are all guilty – Nikon, Canon, Olympus, Pentax, etc. – persist in turning out such execrable equipment?

A recent move by Canon to drop RAW from its P&S cameras may be a clue. The few of these cameras that have half decent lenses would likely embarass the costlier DSLRs from these same makers for half the price. So the consumer gets to suffer on the altar of product differentiation.

That’s a shame, so I suppose it’s little wonder that the much anticipated Sigma DP1 P&S will likely cost closer to $1000 than $300; on the other hand, you get a half decent sensor for your money. If the camera focuses fast, has low shutter lag and a decent lens – not something Sigma’s history of truly frightful lenses makes me too positive about – my $800 is waiting.

That’s if we will ever see this icon – it was last announced that the camera would be available 5 months ago.

About the Snap: Bergie’s

About the Snap

Bergie’s


Date: 1984
Place: Fifth Avenue and 58th Street, New York City
Modus operandi: Looking at store windows
Weather: Gorgeous
Time: 11:00 am
Gear: Pentax ME Super, 28mm Takumar
Medium: Kodachrome 64
Me: Gorgeous location, superb architecture, the poshest store in New York – what could be better?
My age: 33

For many years two of the finest women’s clothing stores in mid-town Manhattan were catty corner (English translation: Diagonally opposite) one another on Fifth Avenue: Bonwit Teller at 56th Street and Bergorf Goodman at 57th.

Bonwit’s no longer exists, pulled down in the middle of the night in 1981, before the City could place a restraining order on him, by that crass vulgarian, Donald Trump. With it went those gorgeous sandstone friezes that decorated the facade. In its place we got the gauche Trump Tower, replete with glitz to attract Eurotrash.

Bergie’s (no one calls it Bergorf Goodman), on the other hand, survived, and thrives on The Ladies who Lunch to this day.

I could never pass either store on my walk to work from my luxury high rise apartment (meaning infested rat trap) on 56th at Eighth, to what was then the Citicorp Center on Lex and 53rd, without stopping to gaze in their windows. And what windows they were! Never less than perfectly arranged, the best of European designers’ work was to be found there. St. Laurent, Givenchy, Ungaro, Marc Bohan (then at Dior). No, not Tommy Hilfiger. The polyester set could shop elsewhere.

This particular day I had detoured north of 57th and was making my way west along 58th Street, a rather mysterious passageway betwen Bergies and The Plaza, with that nice cinema near Fifth which remains there today. Having long been fascinated with the great school of 1930s American high rise architecture – perhaps best seen in Chicago – I was really looking forward to eyeing the Pierre and the Sherry-Netherland, in much the same way that one might a beautiful woman. Much to look at and dwell upon. A feast for the eyes and senses. A corner here, a bit of mystery there, never has architecture been so much fun.

Just before turning right on Fifth I glanced up at Bergie’s window, the one fronting onto 58th Street and there they were – the two grand hotels of New York City. But the real magic happened when those two ladies joined the reflection in Bergie’s window.

Can you say ‘click’?

Note: On this occasion I was using my ‘disposable’ Pentax ME Super rather than the M3. New York streets were seriously dangerous at this time and the theft of the cheap Pentax would not stir the soul as deeply as were I to lose my precious Leica. In the event, that preciously engineered and very compact Pentax turned out to be a wonderful street worker during my New York years (1981-87), only finally moving on when the LEDs in the viewfinder started to play up. Needless to add, it was never stolen.