Monthly Archives: March 2009

Wind Surfing

Photographs

Not exactly planned

I was driving up California’s finest road today, in search of elephant seals, but was distracted by a bunch (covey? clan? cult?) of wind surfers intent on doing their thing on this blustery afternoon. Given that the Pacific rarely gets above 60F, all these chaps come equipped with rubber suits. Indeed, some look as if they were born in them!


5D, 24-105mm at 55mm, 1/6000, f/6.7, ISO 250

I approached the beach where the surfers were only to find it covered with elephant seals. You make your own luck. A couple of quick snaps of the rubber-suited set (keeping the exposure short to preserve the highlights) and then a far friendlier ‘hullo’ to the somewhat chubbier lot lolling on the beach. I guess 65F is paradise for these denizens of the Pacific.


5D, 24-105mm at 105mm, 1/2000, f/6.7, ISO 250

As my 5D and a few lenses are always in the trunk, there’s no need to remember to ‘always carry a camera’. The surfer snaps reminded me that I must clean the 5D’s sensor – a rare bugaboo in a near perfect tool. The blobs in the huge expanse of sky were retouched in LR2 before publication. You can just see the internal reflection in the sky, as the lens was aimed almost directly into the sun.

Back when

Photographs

Remembering the old days

With the season-opening Australian Formula One race today, it seems only appropriate to celebrate the ‘business end’ of some 80 years ago, in the shape of the dash and wheel on a classic Bugatti.


5D, 100mm Macro, ring flash, 1/200, f/11, ISO 160

Made back in the days when men were men …. and women were men!

The brakes were no less refined and just as beautiful:


5D, 100mm Macro, ring flash, 1/200, f/9.5, ISO 160

And in case you thought pre-selector gearboxes were the latest and greatest in racing technology, Bugatti had that down in 1930 ….


Gear ‘lever’ on Bugatti’s pre-selector gearbox

Tomorrow’s viewfinder

Cameras

Well overdue

Take any consumer or better DSLR and you will find it comes with a more than decent lens. Computer design and mass manufacture has made these multi-element wonders but distant relatives of their generally awful forbears.

So worrying about the lens is not the primary matter of concern for the buyer of a good camera.

Ease of use is the decider, I suspect.

And as Apple testifies with its ghastly glossy monitors, first impressions are key to a sale, be it of computers, cars or cameras. No matter that the thing appalls you after a week of ownership. Like that over bright AV system, it looked good in the store.

With cameras, as with people, the eyes are the mirror of the soul, and for a photographer that means the first real feel he gets for a camera is by peering through the viewfinder. Mercifully, with full frame DSLRs, the view is every bit as big and bright as it was through your Nikon F of yore. However, the tradeoff for the (D)SLRs excellent viewfinding is greatly increased bulk, weight and noise, the latter due to the flapping mirror mandated by the design.

This user is cursed with mediocre eyesight. Thus it’s hardly any wonder that some 30 years of my life were spent pressing the button on a Leica M. All it took was one look through the magnificent finder of the M3, or even better, the M2, and you were sold. And the only place you can enjoy a like experience in today’s world is with the M8, at egregious cost. Even if you are Bill Gates, the thought of dropping a $7k camera+lens is going to inhibit your use. It’s the same reason no one drives his Ferrari in anger. So these jewels get little use in the real world.

That’s why I think whoever gets the viewfinder right – the sharp end of the user’s decision process – will be on to a good thing. It will not be Leica – they lack both the electronic skills and the necessary money.

I do think that company will be Panasonic. Recall the press release I referenced here. You have to realize that the Japanese, those masters of modern design, adulate the Leica rangefinder camera. They are leading collectors of the marque and it’s no wonder that a nation with such a refined sense of style and design would find the Leica M as something to look up to. And the Japanese are too smart to deny that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. As much is obvious to a between-the-lines reading of that Panasonic spokesman’s quote.

So, Panasonic, make that electronic viewfinder bright, blur free and with that fabulous suspended frame defining the field of view floating freely in space. And leave a bit of room around the frame so that the user can literally see what’s coming. Then we will have the best of all worlds. A zoom EVF with suspended brightlines, a slim and small mirror-free body, an offset eyepiece for added stability, no viewfinder hump and nothing more than a whisper when the button is pressed. Then the M2’s sublime design will have come full circle, though its replacement will be a mere fraction of the cost. Heck, give the thing a manual wind-on lever. That will stop gratuitous snapping if nothing else will.


The Leica M2 finder – Panasonic’s design brief. The best yet

Manet’s Bar

Paintings

Amongst the great benefits of a 1970s higher British education was the complete laxity shown at my school (University College, London) about attendance. Given that I was a mechanical engineering student and realized early on that there was not a living to be made in the subject, I naturally spent most of those three happy years (1973-76) in the art galleries and auction houses of London. As my net worth was my Leica M3 and one pair of jeans, I wasn’t exactly a bidder at Sotheby’s and Christie’s, but they let me in anyway and I managed to luxuriate in some of the greatest art works never to see the inside of a museum.

Of all these great works that became formative influences none surpasses Manet’s ‘A Bar at the Folies-Bergère’. It didn’t hurt that it was owned by the Courtauld Institute which just happened to be across the road from my college.


Manet. A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. 1882

This is the most intensely photographic of paintings. The use of reflections, the amputated Kermit-like legs of the trapeze artist at top left, the action in the mirror, the sad ‘decisive moment’ look on the barmaid’s face – it’s all there. Best of all, the Courtauld exhibited it under a skylight, meaning that you had a 33% chance of catching the picture at its best (it was raining the other two times) when a beam of sun would illuminate the canvas. The result was magic. You could hear the unruly crowds, smell the booze and sweat and generally revel in the sheer reality of it all.

The most photographic of paintings.

And British beer aficionados amongst you will recognize the red triangles on the bottles on the bar.


An established brand for a few hundred years now

As for my grades, magna cum laude was a perfect ROE (Return On Effort) – six months’ work beating the three years’ worth which a summa dictated. A gentleman’s degree!