Monthly Archives: January 2019

Old and new

Motorcycles, Photographs

With the Porsche Club.

The cool mornings here in Scottsdale see me mounting the old steed for a desert run to procure the morning croissant. My gas cost exceeds that of the French delicacy and with the mercury at 44F this morning the old leather jacket with a Thinsulate liner was indicated. GoreTex may be just the thing for breathability, but it does not cut through the cold on an unfaired machine.

As luck would have it the local Porsche Club was having a get together at the grocery store of choice and when I pulled up on the old Airhead conversation naturally ensued. We share a heritage of horizontally opposed air cooled engines, although the cooling air for the bike is naturally provided to the protruding fins on the cylinder heads, that for the 356/911 set is courtesy of a massive fan mounted on a vertical axis in the engine compartment out back.


My 1975 BMW R90/6 at a recent old bike show.

BMW bikes and Porsche cars abandoned air cooling for the most part in the ’90s in the face of rising horse power demands and efficiency, and most serious Porsche and BMW bike men maintain that the world pretty much ended about that time.

There was a nice study in contrasts in this part of the parking lot.


2019 GT3 and 1965 356.


The $200k 911 is worth less …. Lots of nice P cars in the background.
And yes, the ‘bra’ on the 356 is an abomination.

The green GT3 is the last normally aspirated 911 available. All the others from the regular model through to the Turbo use twin turbos to keep pollution down, which also takes out the gorgeous sound of the normally aspirated six. Porsche (and BMW) have traded charisma for competence. Turbocharged engines run so much quieter that Porsche now pipes artificial sound into the cabin to reassure the poor schnook at the wheel that he is driving the real thing. This is engineering?

The Super Cub is back

Motorcycles, Photographs

The greatest motorcycle ever.

With 100 million made and counting it’s great news that Honda’s Super Cub motorcycle is being reintroduced in the US. The original dates from 1958.


The original ‘step through’ bike. This is the new version.

The step through design meant that ladies did not have to show their undergarments to all and sundry when getting on – or getting off for that matter – and Honda paired the roll-out with the greatest motorcyle campaign ever.


The greatest bike ad ever – June 1963.

The Super Cub was revolutionary in so many ways it’s hard to know where to begin. It had a four stroke engine whose low compression ratio made the use of the lowest octane gas possible and obviated the need for an electric starter, which was an option. The plastic fairing, a first, provided excellent weather protection for the rider and the top speed of 40+mph was all you needed in crowded western and eastern cities. The chain was enclosed to keep oil off the rider’s legs and the DIY maintenance was so simple anyone could perform it. The semi-automatic gearbox deleted that pesky clutch, meaning even women could ride the Super Cub when not in the kitchen or in labor.

But it was that magical advertising campaign which made all the difference. Watch The Who’s ‘Quadrophenia’ and you see warring mods – on scooters and neatly dressed – fighting rockers – on bikes and in leather jackets – beating one another up in Brighton. What else was there to do in early 1960s London on a weekend, after all? Then along comes Honda with this:


Not just for poor eastern nations.

This was fun transportation for people who did not have grease in their hair or under their fingernails and who dressed like nice preppies in upper end western hemisphere culture.

That $215 in 1966 was actually a bargain. Using CPI data that computes to $1,675 today whereas the Super Cub is coming back to the US at $3,599. But you get a tremendous increase in technology and reliability compared with the already reliable original. The 50cc engine is now 125cc, the brakes are hydraulic disks, not drums, all lighting is LED, ABS is standard and was but a dream 50 years ago, the wheels are cast not spoked and the tires are the far safer tubeless variety as a result. Fuel injection? But of course.

My Honda scooter, bought 15 months ago and now with 2,000 miles on the clock may look fancier but the Super Cub is a classic.

Do the environment a favor and help destroy Middle East and Russian hegemony over oil supplies. Get a Super Cub and extend your life expectancy.

Panasonic FF mirrorless imminent

Panasonic

A new FF entrant.

DP Review has an interesting interview with a Panasonic representative, talking about the forthcoming full frame S1 (24mp) and S1R (47mp) bodies.

While Panny is coy about the maker of the sensors, meaning it’s not Panny, that hardly matters. Panny and Nikon no more make all the parts in their hardware than Mercedes and BMW do in their cars, where everything from shocks, wheel, electronics, brakes, windows, seats, etc. is sub-contracted. That does not stop them from making good products.


The Panasonic S1R.

Panny’s timing is perfect. With Nikon having just introduced the mirrorless Z6/Z7, bodies which really dictate a move to the new compact lens line, Panny will be identically priced. The new user will have to pay for a body and lens and you can bet that if Panny wants decent market share that prices will be identical to Nikon’s. Best of all the bodies will hit the market with a large range of lenses from Panny (the MFT optics are excellent), Leica ($$$) and Sigma, the latter for those who do not care about bulk, weight and poor auto focusing. The target market is stated as being the working pro. I would wager that the bodies will take adapted MFT lenses with full functionality, restricting the sensor size to that of MFT. Not nuclear physics and nice to have, the 47mp sensor becoming 12mp, perfectly adequate for all but mural sized prints.

It is heartwarming to read of Panny’s experiments with ergonomics described in the article, something very reminiscent of Leica’s approach in designing the landmark M3 in the early 1950s, the best handling camera of the time. Panny also puts significant stress on the quality of the EVF and the camera’s durability, both required if they are to compete with Nikon. Further, given the high quality video implementation in Panny’s high end MFT bodies it seems the video maker has much to look forward to here. Panny really knows video.

From a hardware perspective there has never been a better time to be a photographer, even if the cell phone revolution has saturated the world with execrable photography.

Dreck

Photographs

Beyond hope.

Yiddish sang is full of marvelous putdowns, one of the finer ones being ‘Dreck’. This most onomatopoeic of nouns describes something so awful that it is beyond redemption. A good, not-too-recent example was this simply awful book of photographs, now mercifully out of print. It remains the only picture book I have placed in the trash. This was true dreck.

But intent on refining the genre, The Guardian has published an article so poorly written, its author so ill informed about street photography, that it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry. It gets worse when you look at the accompanying images which redefine dreck. And the merde on this cake is disclosed when you realize this snapper lives in Paris, a city in which it is almost impossible to take a bad street picture.

Now in our modern world it is the done thing to encourage support and mentoring, two movements which have done more to excuse mediocrity than any I can think of. When something is awful, tell the author to cease and desist, don’t encourage production of more. Tough love goes further than fake sweetness.

The world of street photography took a downward turn when this snapper got hold of a camera. She should stick to cooking, though if that is half as bad as her photography I fancy I would opt for McDonald’s, which would be a first in the last three decades.


Not dreck. Timing, composition, humor – what makes a great street snap.
Panny G1, 9-18mm MFT Oly zoom.


Even better. A picture that tells a story and is timed to perfection.
Panny G1, kit zoom.

Both images snapped in San Francisco’s glorious Mission District in 2011, before the Googlites chased away the decent people who once called it home.


Paris done right, 1976. From the Louvre before I. M. Pei’s execrable pyramid was erected.
Leica M3, 35mm Summaron, TriX, D76.

Fire!

Photographs


The science building burns down at Mount Hermon School – November 20, 1965.

It’s the most famous picture taken at any US prep school, the image of the seemingly insouciant footballers playing on while the school’s science building burns to the ground.

My son will graduate from that very same school in 2020.

The NYT has the full story.