Those brilliant Japanese.

Talk of warranties requires that I point out that Joseph Juran died the other day at the grand age of 103. With W. Edwards Deming he taught the gospel of quality control to Japanese management and workers after World War II. Why the Japanese? Because when he tried to teach Americans he invariably found the bosses stayed away and sent only low level workers to his lectures. To this day Detroit has not learned the lesson that quality starts at the top.

Today ‘Made in Japan’ is a touchstone of quality whereas ‘Made in Detroit’ is what ‘Made in Japan’ was in 1945.

But it isn’t just quality that distinguishes Japanese products.

It is also innovation.

Yet you still hear that old saw that the Japanese are mere copyists and incapable of innovating.

Never mind that while GM’s CEO just stated that he is going to devote more time to lobbying (read – going to Washington with his right hand out, the other in the taxpayers’ pocket), Honda is test marketing a hydrogen powered car in Los Angeles. It comes complete with a device that plugs into the natural gas line at home and makes hydrogen for the car. Washington will doubtless try to quash this innovation as there go all those gasoline taxes. Much the way in which Detroit destroyed rail travel in the US. For all its talk of free competition America still loves monopolies and cartels. Can you say Microsoft? A company which never learned the meaning of quality and which could learn a lot from the likes of Juran and his followers.

Look at camera gear. The last innovation out of Germany was the wonderful view/rangefinder in the Leica M3 -1954, though designed in 1938 or so. No need to dwell on the reasons for the delay. No, it had nothing to do with quality.

The Japanese? Look at some of the functions in cameras which they have perfected. The SLR instant return mirror, auto diaphragms, auto-focus, matrix metering, all sorts of viewfinder displays, linear focusing motors, affordable aspherical lenses, miniscule motor drives, eye controlled focus (beats me why Canon ceased offering that – the camera would focus where the eye was looking – sheer genius), image stabilization, face detection, smile detection, tiny mass storage devices, LCD screens. Amazing stuff. Great innovation.

The elegant and affordable Pentax Spotmatic – the camera whose maker made the instant return mirror a reality.

Innovation is not invention. Innovation is bringing the invention to market in quantity at an affordable price with a guarantee of quality. Juran knew that. Anyone can invent.

So next time your neighbor tells you the Japanese are copycats, just purr away in your hydrogen powered car, your magical Japanese DSLR in the glove compartment, leaving a trail of water droplets in his driveway while he ponders the challenge of a refill at $10 a gallon to drive his Detroit steel to the repair shop.

But there is hope. It seems that NASA gets it.

The soul of the machine.

What is it that makes a machine a classic? For that matter, how do you define classic?

Well, it has to have class. I can’t define that but I know it when I see it.

It must be superbly functional.

Its use must be second nature.

It must have magic. Yes, that sense of fitness for purpose you get when you pick it up, use it.

It must be made well enough to survive the ravages of time and use.

It must be reliable.

For as long as I can remember, I have used a classic. No, not the Leica, that was sold a while back and yes, it was and remains a classic. The one I continue to use daily is the Bic Cristal ball pen.

A classic if there ever was one. 5D, 85mm.

I was reminded of the sheer genius of the Bic Cristal’s design (it used to be just a ‘Bic’ until newer, poorer variations came along) when my last one, above, got dangerously low on ink. The local office supply stores no longer carry it. Clerks, when asked, return the question with a vacant stare. How can this be? Here’s a device whose hexagonal barrel fits the hand just so, cannot roll off a desk, is clear so you can see the ink level, writes for ever without leaking and comes with a push on cap that, while easily lost, cannot possibly fail. The only moving part is the tungsten carbide ball tip. Anyway, I got on the web and tracked some down in Chicago. The order will likely last me until I’m six feet under, pushing up the daisies; meanwhile, you can bet that some accountant at Bic will make sure it’s discontinued because the profit margins don’t work.

In the internal combustion world, motorcycles have given us but three classics – the Brough Superior, the Vincent and the BMW air cooled twins.

In cars, the VW Beetle and the Porsche 911. Utility and purpose combined. The Mini was chic but a passing fad. No classic.

In camera design there are as few classics as with pens, bikes and cars. Indeed, give me just about any modern camera, or pen, and I will turn right around and either sell it or give it away. Not much out there with the sheer design genius of that Bic.

But I’m lucky to have owned a few. Heck, no, not lucky. I sought them out.

The Leica M2, obviously, preferably with a 35mm lens. An instant classic whose beauty and functionality defined the 35mm film era and while the functionality died with film, the beauty remains. Many refer to the old screw thread mount Leicas as classics but they are nothing of the sort. Poorly made compared to the M2, a truly awful viewfinder, a rangefinder almost as bad and the inane two shutter speed dials. Rube Goldberg would be proud.

The waist level Rolleiflex. About as clunky and strange a design as you could conceive of, but it worked, was near silent, delivered large sharp negatives and was lovely to behold.

The Crown Graphic. Nothing too subtle here, but it worked, made enormous originals yet folded into a small box. And you could fix it with a Swiss Army knife when it went wrong, which wasn’t too often.

And then you come to digital which, after ten years on the market has not come remotely close to producing a classic. Maybe that’s because the rates of change have been so high during that decade that no one has come up with a stable, survivable design. Maybe no one ever will? But do I ever think of my two digital cameras – the LumixLX1 and the Canon 5D – as classics? Not remotely. When they fail or get materially improved, they will be discarded just like that Bic.

But the Bic will remain a classic.

This lot should last me.

Not your father’s Nikon

Some neat pictures of the asesemly line for the Nikon D3 full frame DSLR appear here.

I was surprised how seemingly un-sterile the general environment appears.

A trip to the dentist gives a pause for reflection

What have my teeth to do with photography?

Let me start with a recent couple of incidents which caused the needle to spike on the Pindelski BS meter.

I have my teeth cleaned every six months. I don’t know why it’s every six months. Maybe it should be a year? Two years? I floss twice daily, adhere to high standards of dental hygiene and try to preserve that most important of tools for success in America, a beautiful, toothy smile. I live with the six month frequency as it seems to me the related check-up will disclose any problems in a timely manner. The cleaning, on the other hand, seems like a waste of time and money, even if it makes me feel holier than thou.

On a related topic, I take my dog to the vet annually for his shots and they assure me he is in great shape. Like a cold nose in the leg every morning didn’t already tell me that.

Now both these ‘professionals’ tried to rip me off last week. The dentist decided I needed to come in every four months. The vet said the dog needed biannual check-ups. When asked why, neither could provide a reasoned, objective, statistical argument supporting their views. Rather, I got the usual BS about “We feel that….” and “In our opinion….”. Notice how fraudsters and monarchs (same thing, really) default to the first person plural when they mean ‘I’. A simple, if naive, attempt at the power of agency. If it’s ‘we’ then more than one person must be in on the decision, right? And who are you, Mr. Layman, to question us professionals? Further, whenever I hear the words ‘believe’, or ‘think’, or ‘in my opinion’ my default conclusion, absent evidence to the contrary, is that the speaker is either lying or ignorant.

This technique is most commonly used, of course, by car mechanics, the medical profession and every scumbag salesman in insurance. Fear sells. It’s why some believe in God absent no credible scientific evidence to support their delusion. It’s the ultimate fear sell. “Buy insurance (make a donation) now at the Temple/Church/Mosque because one day you will need it”. Each is levering the consumer’s ignorance to tack on gratuitous bills. “Trust me, your engine will last longer on synthetic oil” (even if it means I can charge you four times as much). Zero objective statistical evidence on that one, by the way, unless you believe the stuff the oil companies put out. “You need an annual check up” (even if I disclaim all liability for missing the golf ball sized cancer on your head). Statisticians are wise to these games, of course, and the smarter ones are publishing refutations of these frauds by the medical profession (whom you thought you could trust) and the car mechanic (whom you know you cannot trust).

The bottom line when it comes to any sort of insurance is, in the words of a great US President, “Trust but verify”.

So if the current weakening US economy is the true source of these fraudulent attempts at revenue enhancement (dentists, vets, doctors and car mechanics have sub-prime loans too), some consideration of failure curves is in order. Which is where the photographic bit comes in.

Those who are in the machine sales racket will tell you that preventive maintenance is de rigeur. But think a moment about failure curves and you will see that machines fail most often when very new and very old. One of the greatest frauds in American retail sales practice is the ‘Extended Warranty’. It’s offered on every car, computer, camera, gadget, you name it, on sale in the retail world. Doctors, of course, offer no such warranty on their work and neither do dentists. There’s too much money to be lost. But the retail vendor knows the consumer is, for the most part, a blithering idiot. He knows if that new camera is to fail it will do so right away or thousands and thousands of pictures later. Any failure in the first year (the highest risk one) is covered, free, by the manufacturer’s warranty. The late one is irrelevant as the extended warranty will have expired. Meanwhile the sucker who has just paid the extended warranty premium has contributed a like amount of pre-tax net income to the seller. Sweet!

Think it’s trivial? Let’s check the B&H website. These estimable, honest folks are not above capitalizing on victims of American public schooling (mathematics is not on the curriculum). Can’t really say I blame them – it’s a for-profit business, after all. Too bad I cannot buy their stock.

Here’s the warranty they offer on the $2,200 Canon 5D body:

Here it is on the $1,059 Canon 24-105mm L zoom, a natural partner for this body:

Now given that these are statistically computed premiums which assure the seller maximum profit, we can glean two things from the amount. The 5D is more likely to fail (the premium is 5.9% of the selling price) than the lens (3.8%). OK, so how likely is that failure?

If I was in this protection racket, I would expect to clear a 75% margin. For every $100 dollars of revenue a net profit of no less than $75. Now when that 5D blows, it’s going to be something big – the mirror fails, the motor burns out, the meter goes kaput. A $1,000 repair, but $750 to you, Mr. Retailer. So every 5D failing because of manufacturing error (use, of course, is not covered) costs the writer of the insurance policy $750. So if I want a 75% margin, the failure rate of Canon’s 5D can be seen from this Excel spreadsheet – I have used the Goal Seek function and show the input box for the variables:

Stated differently, for the policy writer to make his 75% annual margin, he can sustain no more than one claim for every 69 cameras sold.

Or, looked at from the perspective of the user, there is a 1 in 69 chance of the camera failing in the three year extended warranty period. And you are going to pay $129.95 to protect a 1 in 69 chance of a $1,000 cost?. Let me put this politely. If you answered ‘Yes’ I am going into the warranty writing racket.

You want the numbers for that fabulous Canon 24-105mm L zoom? Assuming a $375 repair cost to the insurer, the result is 1 in 112. I repeat. 1 in 112.

When did you last bet on a 1 in 69 or 1 in 112 long shot? Because that’s what you are doing if you buy an extended warranty on your photographic gear.

So next time you are encouraged to have preventive maintenance on your car, body, teeth or camera, or someone tries to sell you an extended warranty, do the math. The rational amongst you will keep the money every time. The others need to beat a path to Pindelski Warranties Inc., cash in hand. And the smart ones will, of course, run the camera until it drops because that’s the lowest cost statistical probability.

Is there ever a set of circumstances under which a warranty makes statistical sense for your 5D? Check this database of shutter lives and you will see that the average life to failure of the Canon 5D’s shutter is some 217,000 actuations. Over 4 years (the extended and basic warranty periods in aggregate) that translates to 1,043 snaps a week. So, if you are a pro banging away at a higher rate than that, consider the warranty. But check the fine print. Chances are that professional use is not covered ….

The Nikon D3 is pushing the limits of complexity

I have never been a fan of some of the needless menu complexity of Canon’s 5D, my mainstay camera. So now that the estimable DP Review has started poking about the design of the full frame Nikon D3 I was eager to take a look how the designs compared.

First indications are not encouraging. The vast number of menu options is an order more complex than anything on the 5D and I have to wonder where all this is going. Worse, just like with the Canon, most choices have to be made after scrolling through options using the LCD screen on the back, rather than with knobs and dials on the body. Knobs and dials with fixed functions (shutter speed, say, or ISO sensitivity) are the preferred way to go. No hunt and peck. No squinting. It’s the sole superior feature remaining in film cameras. Any time a display provides for more than one variable, the user interface suffers.

So while I greatly appreciate that Nikon’s lens mount is backwards compatible with just about every Nikon F mount lens made, albeit with some compromise in automation with older lenses, I have to wonder just who needs all those hundreds of choices. Wouldn’t it be easier to relegate all of those to an application on your computer which would permit storage of the user’s selections when the camera is connected? Let’s face it, adjustment of variables is an 80/20 game – you want some almost all the time – focus, aperture, shutter speed, ISO – whereas most are accessed once in a blue moon.