Fire sale

Cameras, Hardware, Photography

Bad omen

What do Porsches, iPhones and Leicas have in common? Luxury brands all, that’s certain. But what you will never find is these premier products selling at a 50% discount for a recently introduced and still current model.

So when I saw this yesterday, the message was clear:




Panny fire sale

Think this is a bargain? Think that parts will long be available for a camera from a maker which just sold its sensor division after years of struggle? Think the iPhone and computational photography does not rule the roost? Think that cell phone camera technology does not do 80% of what the big digital body with its clumsy lenses does? Plus another 100% which the whopper cannot do at all?

Think again.

It’s a new world for camera hardware. The Panny occupies the old world and will not be there much longer. My Panny MFT bodies and lenses? Sold the day after I bought the iPhone 11 Pro.

John Beasley Greene

Photographers

Early photographer of archaeology.

The NYT has a fine piece on this little known photographer whose output dates from the 1850sand who died at a very young age.




Click the image for the article.

The author writes: “Today, Greene’s images evoke a time when travel was still an adventure, ancient civilizations were largely mysterious and the grammar of photography was just being invented.” And, I would add, before social media destroyed photography.

Art at PHX

Photographs

Not half bad.




High quality maple wood sphere in Terminal 3.


Beautiful terrazzo floor in the skyway – Rockefeller Center quality.


Big Brother.


Phoenix Airport has many art displays scattered among the various terminal buildings, which makes for a little joy in the otherwise miserable US airport experience.

iPhone 11 Pro snaps.

The end of the beginning – 2019

Bio

A fabulous birthday gift.

These biographical pieces generally run annually in time for Hanukkah and Christmas.

Words cannot express this father’s feelings when, last night, my son Winston received the below, just in time for my birthday. There could be no finer birthday gift:





Our many college visits over the past couple of years have focused on the northeast and on Ivy and Little Ivy schools, Union being one of the latter. You can read about those visits here; the index includes two visits to Union College. The little Ivies are typically one tenth of the size of the Big Ivies and focus more intensely on liberal arts studies.

To quote Winston’s illustrious namesake: “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

Well done, Winnie!

Automotive shantytown

Photographs

In wet collodion.




A dying breed.

Usually I find the use of antiquated photo technologies to be an exercise in pretentiousness, but this lovely photo essay on a dying automotive shantytown in Queen, New York, is an exception. The images were recorded on tintype using the wet collodion process which requires a recently moistened plate to work.

Click the image to see the essay.