Category Archives: Photography

Canon 1Ds Mark III

Cameras

The poor man’s medium format digital.

The English site DP Review has an exhaustive test of Canon’s top of the line full frame digital camera, the 1Ds Mark III, reflecting no fewer than eight months’ use. What is surprising in their conclusions is that they compare the images to ones taken on a medium format digital sensor. I have long maintained that my 5D easily equals medium format film results, so despite its $8,000 price tag, the big Canon body remains a bargain when you look at the cost of medium format digital bodies, with their bulk, slow speed of use and limited lens ranges.

Do I have any interest in one? No. Total overkill for me and why would I want to spend all that money when I routinely make large prints (18″ x 24″ is my idea of ‘large’) from the 5D? I can easily print from half the frame at that size – equivalent to a 36″ x 24″ print from the full frame – with negligible quality loss. And I don’t mean from just the ‘best’ snaps – pretty much from every frame.

On a related note, the review suggests that sensor noise is now beginning to rise with pixel density – the far less dense 5D sensor is more than a match when it comes to absence of grain. Maybe there are new breakthroughs around the corner but it’s hard to change the laws of physics.

Leni Riefenstahl

Hall of Shame, Movies, Photographers

To know her work is to understand.

Few would dispute that the greatest movie about the Olympics is Olympia, Leni Riefenstahl’s 1936 masterpiece chronicling the Aryan master race in the 1936 Olympics. It shows perfect specimens of the nordic man-god ideal variously chucking the discus, running like a gazelle (albeit slower than the schwartzer untermensch Jesse Owens), and generally being, well, white and superior. Sure it’s dated (whitey is unlikely to win much of anything in the modern sham known as the Olympic Games) but the photography is superb.

The movie follows on from one far greater, perhaps the most evil film ever made, Triumph of the Will. Watch it with an open mind and you, too, will be swept up in the cleverly managed tension which builds throughout the movie until her slightly less than Aryan leader finally makes his appearance for the 1934 Nazi Party rally in Nuremberg. The style is one of a succession of still images rather than that of a movie. Between Riefenstahl’s adulation of this bad man and the Propaganda Ministry’s financing, she produced the greatest fake documentary yet made. I was forcibly struck by just how plagiarized her work has become in watching the old version of Spartacus with Kirk Douglas and just about any of the tedious Star Wars epics from Geroge Lucas (a man who has never met an actor he can direct). Look at any of the crowd scenes of the armies of bad guys from either director and you have a shameless rip off of the best/worst in Riefenstahl’s propaganda masterpiece. Look at the post war The Third Man and you have all her camera angles writ large by director Carol Reed. She left an indelible mark on the documentary genre.


Hitler’s favorite film maker supervises filming

Sure.

She was just following orders.


A big lens and no moral compass, Riefenstahl participates enthusiastically in the 1934 Nuremberg Nazi party rally.

They should have whacked her at Nuremberg – where could have been more appropriate? – along with all the others in 1946, and have saved the world another 50 plus years of her denials and apologia. Her total absence of shame rightly confines her to this journal’s Hall of Shame.

Update August 30, 2024:

This Guardian review of a new documentary about this evil woman confirms what I wrote back in 2008, above. They should have whacked her at Nuremberg.

Manhattan on Manhattan

Photography

If you enjoy fine architecture and beautiful photography, you can enjoy one stop shopping in Woody Allen’s superb movie, Manhattan, thanks to the efforts of America’s greatest film maker and his cinematographer Gordon Willis. George Gershwin’s music rounds out this masterpiece. Here are some stills:

For once, monochrome – a usually pretentious and tired medium used as an excuse for mediocrity – works well here.

And, when you are done, contemplate Things That Really Matter, while on the couch:

My list for photographers?

  • HCB’s man jumping over the puddle
  • Anything by Norman Parkinson
  • Guy Bourdin’s outrageous fantasies
  • This month’s issue of Harper’s
  • Hoyningen-Heune’s stark compositions
  • Doisneau’s romantic Paris

Lightroom 2

Lightroom

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.

Photography podcasts

Photography

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.