The Canon PowerShot S50 is a sweet thing. If you stick
with ISO 50, and don't enlarge the full frame beyond 8 x 10",
it's perfectly acceptable for the kind of work I do away from
the studio – casual portraits and even landscapes. The
lens is surprisingly good if you stay below f/8, where
diffraction lowers contrast and sharpness. Generally I leave it
at f/5.6. The small sensor and short focal length add up to
plenty of DOF, so wide apertures aren't especially problematic.
It's one of those cute cameras, like the Ricoh GR1, that can
give you results nobody could tell from images delivered by a
much larger, much more expensive camera. Naturally it has its
limits – don't we all? It's a point-and-shoot, out of
place on a tripod or in a studio, yet the optical viewfinder's
only good for approximate aiming, and the LCD's hopeless in
bright light. There's some fringing, and plenty of noise at
higher ISO's. (The stupidly named NeatImage software helps with
noise, but it's slow to use.) The leather holster came
unstitched and nearly lost me the camera. A surgeon friend
restitched the strap, so I still carry the cam everywhere and
use it more than anything else in my kit. You'll find plenty of
S50 shots in my gallery. There's also a good appreciation of
this model at luminous-landscape.com.
In September I bought a Canon 10D. I knew what to expect
and haven't had any surprises. The D30 was excellent and the
10D's better. It's become my usual tripod camera, pressed into
service for flower photography, still life and macros, studio
work of any sort. Over Christmas I even toted it into the North
Carolina mountains for some hand-held photos of falling water at
speeds of 1/4000 sec, something I couldn't have managed with
film – the 10D's high ISO speeds are damn near noiseless.
So far I have no complaints at all about the 10D. I've begun
wearing glasses while making photos, since both the 10D and the
S50 give me a full view of the finder with glasses on, and I
need to be able to see their LCD's and controls. (Got tired of
whipping my reading specs on and off. Now I have multifocal
lenses.) There's nothing I can tell you about the camera that
hasn't been reported on the review sites. It feels good in the
hands, works well with all my lenses except (occasionally,
inexplicably) the non-USM Canon 50/1.8 "Mark I" (old
metal-barrel model), and so far simply hasn't missed a beat.
It's annoying that it takes so long to write RAW images to the
CF card; if you make a rapid sequence of, say, nine shots (which
is all the buffer will hold), be ready to wait a minute before
you get back into the groove.
2/6/2004. Over the last few weeks I've spent a good deal
of time on frozen lakes in Harriman Park. (You can see the
results in my gallery for January.)
Among other things I discovered that the 10D's shutter won't
work if the camera chills down to, say, twenty degrees
Fahrenheit. It takes a while for this to happen, of course. It
may be that the shutter's the first thing to stop working when
the battery output goes down, though I wasn't getting the
low-battery telltale. The S50 also stops working after a while,
the symptom in its case being a washed-out image – I
suppose the shutter/iris is sticking open.
The Contax
G2's cold-weather symptoms are subtler: it loses autofocus.
That's right – it just won't get an AF lock on anything
smoother than tree bark, and of course when it can't focus it
won't make an exposure. Most frustrating. I wound up in
manual-focus mode, focusing by scale the way I did with my Tower
camera from Sears, Roebuck in 1956. I don't think this is a
battery problem, either; I replaced the batteries with a fresh,
warm pair and that didn't bring back autofocus. It occurs to me
now that I noticed the same failure last June in New Brunswick,
where it was chilly but above freezing. At the time I thought
the fine rain was guilty, but now I'm not so sure.
Checking
the Web, I turned up a note by another G2 owner who complained
of exactly the same problem.
Why am I using the G2 at all
now that I've gone digital? Well, I suppose I'm trying to find
some excuse for keeping the Contax kit, which is cute and fun to
use (when it works). I have the vague idea of recycling it as my
B&W camera, since the word is that digital doesn't (yet) do
B&W quite as well as film. That may be a lie, but it
encourages me to use the G2. It's also the only way I have to
get true wide angle shots. I've even considered buying a copy of
the Contax Biogon 21/2.8.
Which leads to the question:
What film? I've been re-evaluating B&W – tried so far
Agfa 100, Ilford Delta 100, FP4, TMX, TMY and of course Tri-X.
Results not in yet.
2/8/2004. Results are in, or at least one result: Fuji
Neopan 400 in Tmax gives me the blacks and whites I want. This
photo is what decided me:
For the last two weeks I've used the Contax G2 almost
exclusively – quite a chore, and not cheap either, since
I'd given away my aging film and had to replace the darkroom
chemistry. Were the results convincing? No. My only reason for
keeping the Contax kit is that I already have it, and that I've
got a sentimental attachment to it. Of course it can make good
photos, but the hours, money and effort involved are many times
what I'd spend on digital. The money and effort I can afford,
but every day I have fewer hours ahead of me.
I'm keeping
the G2, but probably won't use it for much except studio
portraits and, if I ever get a model, nudes.
3/3/2004. Another month of G2 follies, and not only have
I bought the Biogon 21, I'm high bidder for a second G2 body on
eBay.
Let me take the lazy man's way out and tell the
story in excerpts from my letters to Neil Fiertel, dear old
friend and complicit photographer. Important: I had no idea
anybody but Neil would ever read what I wrote. We're a couple of
vulgarians. Beware.
2/9/04. After two weeks doing nothing but the G2,
when I went back to the 10D yesterday I was astonished all over
again at how easy it is to get a good image and at how good the
images are. I did a still life of a shell
that has a liquid look I wouldn't know how to get with film. I
don't doubt it's possible, maybe with large format, but not
something I'd hope for from 35mm. Let's face it: the 35 was at
its best as a handheld PJ camera, a la Cartier-Bresson or
Robert Frank or Gene Smith. A studio camera it's not. Yet it
was being pressed into service for that kind of thing. OTOH, a
digicam with a full-size 35mm sensor really is a studio camera
and can deliver images of the sort you'd hope for from a
Hasselblad. Even the 10D has that quality, though you can't
enlarge as much.
2/9/04 (later that night). Sigh. The 10D is every bit
as good as the G2 for black and white, only getting to the
final result takes about 1/1000th as much time and effort. This
is the green channel from a shot I made tonight.
2/12/04. I don't enjoy developing film any more,
though there's still some pleasure in seeing the result when
you hang it up to dry – some atavistic thing. Probably
left over from our days as cavemen and tree dwellers.
B&W
film seems to have peaked out with the T-grain emulsions. Some
still don't like them and insist it peaked with Tri-X and Pan
F. On the Web I find many folks who still mix their own
pyrogallol and Harvey's 777 and other developers that worked
well for Edward Weston and Gene Smith. And let's face it, some
of those guys made wonderful pix. But I'm sure they also lost a
lot because of poor consistency in their developing. In fact,
Messrs Smith and Weston weren't known for their beautiful
negatives; quite the contrary. Ansel Adams tried to put the
thing on a sound basis, but you had to pay lots of attention to
the tech. Cartier-Bresson and Mapplethorpe left the lab work to
others who really knew how to do it.
Let's face it: 35mm
can no longer compete with high-end digital. For the moment,
unless you can afford a digital back and put up with tethering
it to a laptop, medium format film still has an edge, and
nothing can come close to large format. But unless you're
making huge prints (or need camera movements) there's little
call for large format.
Enlarged to 7 x 10.3", that
latest self-portrait I did looks as good to me as the same size
enlargement from a Hassy or Rollei.
2/15/04. The combination of Zeiss 45/2.0 and Neopan
400 (T-grain) film is very good - covers the scale from black
to white with lots of nice tones in between. Ridiculously sharp
too. Something I read on the Web suggested that the Zeiss
lenses are at their best when they're wide open, or nearly so;
so I did a bunch of photos of Chris in colorfully embroidered
(but dark) clothing, in full sunlight, with lens at f/4.
Results seem technically remarkable to me.
2/15/04 (later). Thinking over your comments, I guess
I'd say that I'm reacting against the rather simplistic high
contrast and saturation of typical "Hancock" shots.
One of the reasons for going back to B&W and 35mm (apart
from the teen-age fun of it all) was to get the long slope of
gradations available that way. (Common wisdom is that digital
has range similar to slide film, plenty of snap but less
subtlety than B&W film.)
Maybe this B&W of
Chris is a better example of the nice results I've been getting
with the Contax and Neopan 400.
2/15/04 (still later). Just for the hell of it I made
two A3 (12 x 18") B&W prints, one from the photo of
Chris (G2, Neopan 400) and one from the 10D self-portrait with
the drink in hand. I had to res up the 10D pic, and of course
the 35mm scan at the same dpi (240 is what I use) would've been
considerably over 12 x 18. To make a long story short, both are
very sharp and detailed, no problem counting the threads in the
clothing and so forth, yet to my eye the 10D image gives the
*impression* of greater clarity and sharpness because it's
noiseless. In light areas of the 35mm shot you can, inevitably,
see the grain - ISO 400, after all. Very likely if I'd used an
ISO 100 film like TMX the grain would be invisible. The 10D
photo looks like something shot with a Hasselblad on TMX.
Anyway, nobody in his right mind would critize either one as
being unsharp.
Both are the kind of results we could
only dream of when we were kids.
2/16/04. After all my fiddlin' comparisons of various
films and sensors and such, I'm still quite happy with the look
of the 10D's images. It really is one of those paradigm shifts.
Photos from different periods have a look that's at least
partly the result of the technology then prevalent - the
Daguerrotype, the wet plate, the early Leica/Contax 35's, the
60's SLR's with Tri-X, etc. There's a clear difference between
the hard and sharp but somehow gritty 35mm images of the 90's
and the new slick, suave, smooth digital images you get from
cams like the D60 or the 10D.
2/18/04. Out of curiosity mostly I shot a roll of TMX
and developed it in Diafine. Results are amazing - it really
looks like something from the 50's. Big grain and blocked
highlights.
2/19/04. Anyway, the Diafine experience was
disappointing, to say the least, as was the Acufine/Tri-X
trial. So far only Neopan 400 in TMax seems to suit the G2.
Sad.
Let's face it. No film/developer combo suitable for
handheld photography (Leica, Contax rangefinder) is going to
beat, or even match, the 10D shooting at the same ISO and
selected for the green channel (most of the noise being in the
blue channel). However, the 10D isn't a Leica/Contax-type
camera suitable for unposed pictures of people. So far nobody,
including Leica, makes a digital with the streetwise qualities
of an M6 or a G2. (For example, the cute li'l S50 has too much
shutter/focus lag.) The Leica/Panasonic announced for sale in a
month or two may be made along those lines, but it's hampered
by having a smallish sensor with only 5mp.
2/19/04 (later). OK, it's hopeless. I don't know and
can't imagine any combination of 35mm film and super-snazzoo
developer that would equal the B&W I can get easily and
routinely from my 10D. Sad, but there it is.
Here for
example is a snapshot I did this evening, characteristically of
myself because nobody else is around except Chris, who's
watching British comedies on TV. It has exactly the smooth,
slick, sharp, luminous quality I've tried so hard, and
generally failed, to get with film.
Here's a portion of the 100% image so you can see that
the detail really is there. Oh yeah, forgot to say: it's made
at ISO 400. Think Tri-X.
Out of curiosity, and to be a completist, I made a
similar photo using the S50 @ ISO 100. It's OK but much
inferior to the 10D shot. Lacks that super snap, that
slick-dick What Rose oiliness. Also it's a bit noisy. Film
could certainly equal or even beat the S50.
2/21/02. After doing my Saturday chores I got the
idea of making some photos of the American suburban landscape.
We live on the brink of the country still, equal parts
Squaresville and Hicksville. I did a couple of shots using the
10D and others using the Contax with Ilford Delta 100, widely
touted as the finest-grained, sharpest film since Kingdom Come.
And yes, it does make very good pictures, but no, it doesn't
beat out the 10D. Sigh. Will attach samples. True, the 35mm
image scanned at 4000dpi is larger than the 10D's (assuming
both are at 100%). But it can't compare to the 10D for smooth,
silky edges and detail.
http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/04_February/546_19 --
G2, "Support Our Troops," Suffern, NY (I'm fond of
this one)
http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/04_February/040221153408bw –
10D, another "Support Our Troops"
http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/04_February/546_34 -- G2, ditto
2/22/04. Neil wrote:
I
realise that digital cameras will replace most uses for film
but metal plate photo litho replaced the use of limestone for
most uses. They are replacements only in the sense that most
people are using the latter over the former...and now
photolitho is going the way of the DoDo also... It is about
convenience and style and sometimes but rarely about inherent
quality. I find for example all the detailed images that you
have sent that were digital lacking in a certain kind of
modular detail which could be called grain in film...there is a
certain building block that is not there. That does not make it
inferior nor superior to film...different certainly...different
in so many aspects that why are we making comparisons any
longer. Just take the film camera as an entirely different
image making machine and the digital camera with all of its
certain advantages...and disadvantages ...for that which it
does best. I would not dump my film cameras since the results
that I get with them are different from digital and thus have a
place in the toolkit just as one kind of paint or brush is
different from and needed in place of another. I remember this
painter who used to pull out the old cloud brush when he was
doing a demo for his students. He kept it just for this purpse
because it did what he wanted it to. Sure he could have used
another and maybe it would have been equal to the task but it
was easier to use the right tool for the right job. If making
super blowups that are grainless is what you need then of
course, use the 10D. If it is an expressive gritty image with
the kind of modular crystalline qualities of film that you
want...go for it.
Curiously, when I would see studio
camera prints in the old days...sharp and grainless as they
were to everyone else, I found them unsharp due to the loss of
grit that to my eyes told me that all was well in the world of
that image. The smooth and slide-y creamy and velveteen look
that they inevitably have, turns me off. Those great big
mountain scenes by A. Adams do Nada for me precisely because
they lack the character of the medium...for me at least. I am
as yet unsure if the digital medium will suit my needs unless I
were to corrupt them by adding grain a la Photoshop filters
which does it to a certain extent but not with the kind of
subtle variation that comes free with film. All in all it is a
tossup.
You have always had a hard-on for grainless and
sharp and I for the somewhat grungier look that I head towards.
It is style and content and not so much technique. I would not
be satisfied with the 10D as it loses sharpness long before
film loses its qualities and for large prints such as are my
goal, it would simply not do the job. I noted on going back to
DPreview, that their tests clearly showed the Sony [828] as
substantially more detailed [than the Canon 10D]...and grainier
due to noise which bothers many people it seems. Now that is a
personal issue that each one must deal with. I would like to
have control over how much noise is in an image and that is
when software will have to suffice. I would rue the day,
though, when only digital images are available and no one would
even know about signal to noise being an issue or that film
grain was even something that one knew intimately.
Just
think, no choice of film stock...no choice of image except
through some kind of software modality? It does not sound
flexible at all...limiting for the artists out there.
When
Litho became so tech, the litho quarries in Germany shut down
for some 30-40 years...a long time anyway. Stones were recycled
and when too thin they were laminated to cheaper stone so that
artists could carry on. The quarries are open again and there
is a demand for their stones as litho is not the same as its
modern substitutes in any way shape or form. It is different
that is all.
Hancock replies:
Very good points indeed. Every case is different. The
replacement of old fuddy-duddy tempera on board with oil on
canvas (cutting-edge, hi-tech in 1500) had much to do with
convenience (the goo stays wet for days, and you can roll the
damned thing up when it's finished) but also with the craving
for a fleshier look. Clearly (as one can tell from the
paintings of our friend Wyeth) it's not a question of one being
simply better than the other.
Likewise, color film
seemed so obviously superior to B&W - adding a whole new
dimension, etc, and being the holy grail of photo tech for a
hundred years - that B&W all but disappeared, and is just
now rebounding, because in fact it does have its own esthetic,
just as chamber music does.
But in the case of, say,
digital versus analog computers, the difference is so big and
the advantages of digital so obvious that analog computing
simply vanished long ago (except for some dedicated specialized
units). Also the biological approach to mental illness, where
you give the sufferer a pill instead of 20 years on the couch,
has driven the Freudians into the realm of tea leaves and
astrology - their technique doesn't work, the other does, end
of story.
Digital versus film lies somewhere between the
obviously-better and the different-results extremes, I'd say.
There's a different look, certainly, and again it's the holy
grail: no grain, and in a couple of years images as sharp and
detailed as any lens can handle.
It's tempting to think that film is the way to go for the
effects you describe. However, once you've digitized something
you can do what you want with it. Like those techniques for
making a recording sound as though it's being performed in a
given concert hall. I would expect that the Tri-X look, or
whatever, will soon be reproducible via software. Naturally you
have to have a *very* detailed image to begin with, and I don't
think we're there quite yet.
You're right about our
different approach to images. I've always been a fan of folks
like Vermeer and Wyeth, possibly because color isn't the big
draw for me (obviously) and because I always had supernaturally
sharp eyes and could see sharpness where you saw the famous
nada.
The thing is, I picked Contax/Zeiss exactly
because I wanted that slick look, or as much of it as possible.
Leica has always been about the kind of sharpness you describe,
while Zeiss traditionally tried to get the grainless, nerveless
look. I really don't crave the grittiness you mention. Even
with B&W I go for stuff like Neopan 400 rather than Tri-X,
the latter looking like gravel to me.
2/23/04. Oh man, I always feel awful after spending
real money. But the last month of B&W testing (plus your
recent comments) decided me, so quick before I could stop
myself, on the spur of the moment, having checked keh.com's
list of newly arrived used equipment, I bought a copy of the
Zeiss Biogon 21/2.8, which is supposed to be as good as
anything except Leica's aspheric 21mm.
2/24/04. Whilst awaiting delivery of this jewel I'm
preparing for it by trying to think what on earth I can take
21mm photos of. Came home early today (more on that later) and
spent the afternoon driving around the suburbs looking for
photo ops. Found plenty, but in places where I could never make
a photo -- can't stop the car in the middle of the highway,
after all. And would probably be arrested, and my Contax
confiscated, if I took photos of the gigantic BLESS OUR TROOPS
flag in front of the police station. Whadda you, some kinda
Arab? (Remember we live in an area where there are special
kosher ambulances with all their labels in Hebrew, etc.)
So
I wound up as usual in the woods, totally unprepared, wearing
running shoes yet, and damn near broke the camera and my neck
sliding down a snowy cliff ('cause it's snowing) into a
freezing river. Saved my nuts by grabbing the rough bark of a
friendly tree. I like trees.
I think (we shall see) that
I have the true clue on B&W film/developer now. There's
lots of mystification and obfuscation, but to me it seems
pretty simple. Different combinations of film and developer and
time and exposure give you different looks-and-feels. Find a
look-and-feel you like and go for it. And that's what I've
done. I'm tired of experimenting.
2/24/04 (later). Whew. Bit of a chore, shooting and
developing and scanning and Photoshopping B&W film. But one
makes these sacrifices.
The best of the photos I made
today must be the dog run, 450.15. Deeply felt if nothing
else.
These aren't easy photos, I know. Ugly in (I hope)
the same way lots of North European woodcuts circa 1500 are
ugly. Different from my too-gorgeous color fotos of flowers and
beheaded bunnies. More honest in a way. Staring into an
asshole. The asshole stares back.
Remember I'm trying to
do without obvious composition, and in these recent fotos I'm
also doing without color. Tour de force if it works. If not,
not.
2/25/04. It's not attracting lots of profound
comments. Sum total so far: two, both from folks who probably
think Picasso needed glasses:
"Good overall effort,
however the image lacks a strong focal point! The contrast,
light and details are good."
"Uninteresting,
to much open space. I would like to see it cropped leaving out
the about a third of the lawn in the foreground. Also a filter
to bring out the sky and trees in the background."
Needless
to say, "Support Our Troops" was dismissed as having
no "center of interest," also "too cluttered."
Surprised they didn't criticize the drab colors.
On the
other hand, everybody's ecstatic about pretty flowers in a
vase.
Sometimes I wish there were places to post photos
where comments are forbidden. Still, those I get are helpful in
a meta-sense. They help me gauge the placement of my stuff in
the universe of common perceptions, if you take my meaning.
Also these folks are trying to be helpful, assuming I'm a kid
who doesn't know you need a center of interest or that a good
photo must tell a story. In most cases they'd be right, and
since I don't have a rep on these websites they don't see any
reason to look harder.
2/25/04 (later). Unfortunately not enuf time to say
everything I thought of while showering and driving to work.
However, the basics. Your suggestion about the difference
between film and digital, and about your and my esthetic, led
or anyway contributed to photos like "Support Our Troops"
(which indeed doesn't show up well on the Web, but in a print
you can read the sign) or "Dog Run." I can't bring
myself to use the graininess you mentioned. But I can, I think,
get the grittiness you like. It's a sort of meta-grit, though.
I mean, grittiness has to do with breaking up solids into
patterns of grit, or in adding odd specks of adventitious
matter to the image. I'm doing, or trying to do, the same thing
via composition -- using large areas of pattern (as in the dog
run) or including lots of clutter. The lack of a COI could also
be seen as part of this nouveau grit.
Also I like grits with eggs. But smooth, buttered grits.
2/25/04 (still later). Yup. Personally I was
delighted with "Dog Run" and just printed it at 12 x
18". So bleak, so misty, so empty, so Beckett. Here's a
slightly warmer evocation of the place and time, taken a few
minutes later facing in the other direction:
http://www.quinbus.net/gallery/04_February/551_35.
Lots
of excitement tomorrow: my new used lens is scheduled to
arrive. It's a 21mm Zeiss Biogon. When Zeiss came out with
their original 21mm Biogon (in the late 40's) it was the widest
wide angle lens made for a 35mm camera. They made a version of
it for the Hasselblad Superwide.
'Course I've never once
used anything shorter than 28mm, so may strike out with this
one. As you know, Saint Cartier-Bresson didn't use very short
or very long lenses either. In fact, some people who had
converse with him will tell you he swore he never used anything
but a 50mm lens, and a Leica, and black and white, and full
frame. Others (who seem to have done more research) claim he
did on occasion use a 35mm sort-of-wide-angle, and in the 30's
preferred the Zeiss 50/1.5 lens, and that the famous photo of
the Cardinal in Paris was made with a non-Leica, and that the
ultra-famous "Behind the Gare St-Lazar" is *not* full
frame, and that once, on commission, he did a color cover for
"Paris-Match." These exchanges quickly evolve into
pissing contests. As for Henri, if he remembers the details, he
ain't saying.
2/26/04. (Lunchtime.) Chris says my new/old lens has
arrived. Will check it out this evening, though I can't do much
really until the weekend. I think I have ten days to decide
whether to keep it. keh.com is pretty respectable that way, and
the 21's sell quickly.
Hope it's OK and that I can warm
up to it. As I've said, I have mixed feelings about keeping one
foot in the past, though no doubt what you say about
appropriate technique is true. In any case, for the moment, and
for the foreseeable future, there are *no* digital equivalents
to cameras like the G2 or the Leica M's. Those photojournalism
DSLR's are the nearest digital comes at the moment, but they're
big and heavy and expensive.
Funny. I remember our 50's discussions about SLR vs
rangefinder and so forth, and your first SLR, an Asahi Pentax
circa 1962, sans prism. You didn't like the photos of Bob
Schwalberg, and I recall your exact words: "He likes his
negatives so thin you can't see 'em."
Ah well. I guess Bob's dead now, like everybody else.
2/26/04 (later). Well, the 21mm arrived today from
keh.com. As far as I can see it'snever been used - was
delivered in original box with original papers except for the
guarantee. Like my other Zeiss G-lenses, it's a jewel, clad in
titanium and made, seemingly, by nanomachines incapable of the
least flaw. All I have to do now is find the time to use it.
Oh, needless to say, the viewfinder (of course it has a special
finder) sucks optically, with major barrel distortion and no
diopter control and no bright line. Alas, the G2's downfall has
always been its finders; Leica has great viewfinders, as well
they should considering their prices.
But Les, wouldn't
you really rather have a Leica M7 with their own 21/2.8,
28/2.8, 50/2.0 and 90/2.8? Well, yes, maybe I would; however,
that outfit, which exactly matches my G2 kit, would cost me (at
B&H) $9,200. The Contax/Zeiss stuff, all new, currently
comes in at $3,500, which indeed is about what I paid. Is the
red dot worth nearly three times as much -- the price of a good
used car?
No.
BTW, as usual the keh.com guys delivered on time, and the
product is as advertised, if not better. I recommend them.
www.keh.com.
2/27/04. What's the straight dope on looseness in a
lens barrel? I've had lenses, generally used, with some play
discernable. For example, with Chris's Pentax macro, which
works very well indeed, if you grasp the glans of the barrel,
where you would screw in a filter (though most people prefer
doing it in bed), the barrel's not perfectly tight, so that if
you try to rotate it clockwise then counterclockwise you can
feel a bit of play. I've usually put this down to drying out of
a lubricant or wear in some set screw, and figure it's
harmless, since the lens doesn't actually move in and out,
which would affect focus, or side to side off-axis.
I
ask because that's the only thing I can find that qualifies the
used 21mm as used. There's a barely perceptible amount of play
in the barrel.
3/1/04. After much reflection and testing I guess I'm
reconciled to the 21mm, which turned in a decent performance at
the museum even though I used it wide open for each and every
shot. No noticeable vignetting, and corners are acceptably
sharp. I should've had faster film, but whoknew? Anyway that
was an extreme test.
No doubt after a few years I'll
stop worrying about the loose lens barrel.
The frequent
inability of the G2 to focus is another annoyance. The camera's
notorious for that. Your G5 (or for that matter Chris's G2) has
far more reliable autofocus. I guess it could be that I just
got a lemon, or that a repairman could fix it. But fuckit. I
can always focus by scale, a great leap forward for technology
that lands me where I was in 1956 with my first 35mm camera
from Sears, Roebuck. Maybe as film cameras head for the toilet
I can pick up an extra body or two cheap, and get one that
focuses better. It wouldn't be a bad idea to dedicate one such
body to the 21mm.
Remember that I never used such a
short lens before this. I was pleased to see that I could take
photos which don't show the oddities that shout "superwide"
-- elliptical circles, stretched perspective in the corners.
The photos of the whale room are quite impressive, really, not
esthetically but in the sense that they show most of that very
large interior without the central hot spot or weird
proportions I usually associate with w.a. Instead the lens does
what I hoped it would: opens up the space, separating out
details like the little people, the big whale, the various
stairs and windows and spotlights.
And of course you're
right about flare -- apparently the T-coating really works.
Even shooting into spotlights or for that matter into the sun,
I haven't seen any flare. The instructions that come with the
lens say you should *not* use a lens hood, and Contax doesn't
make one for this lens.
3/1/04 (later). What's annoying about the G2 is that
it's strictly autofocus, like the GR1. Canon (at least with the
USM lenses) allows for manual focus with no changes in settings
at all, just twist the magic ring and you're there. Also the
Canon lenses stay where they were last focused, while the G2
maddeningly goes back to infinity focus after every shot
(unless you hold that button down).
Of course if a
camera depends entirely on autofocus, the autofocus has to
work. I'm halfway to concluding that my personal G2's AF is out
of whack somehow. The fact that cold weather (even above
freezing) makes AF difficult or impossible is suggestive. And
many G2 owners swear to God that they never have any trouble at
all, which sure'n hell isn't my case.
3/2/04. Aye, you have a lot to answer for. By telling
me that film has a dirty, funky quality with its own charm, you
set me off on a quest that's kept me busy for a month of
Sundays, seeking The Look that would give me an alternative to
the sleek look of digital, which I thought suited me perfectly.
And so it does, but one should always be noodling around
looking for something new.
Anyway, the alternative look
I'm finding is one epitomized in my mind by some of Diane
Arbus' B&W's, like the one of the completely tattooed man.
It combines high, count-the-threads resolution with an overall
low-key, toned effect. I think I got it in last month's shots
of Chris wearing Chinese-y clothes from Chico's. And again in a
couple of the AMNH photos I did on Saturday with the Zeiss 21.
It's tricky, because the dark B&W tones can easily turn to
mud; you have to include enough sharply rendered detail to
prevent the mud from happening. Luckily I have the Zeiss glass
and T-grain film. As you pointed out, what's wanted is the
texture grain can give.
This grail is so holy to me now that I've put in a bid
for a second G2 body on eBay.
3/2/04 (later). Why? Because I think my photos were
getting too gorgeous and losing their irony.
3/5/04. Rereading, this morning, your and my words re
the difference (and nondifference) between digital and film
helped settle the matter for me. Digital is noiseless and can
be used wherever I want the look of a Hasselblad or 4x5 --
studio and landscape sort of thing. Film has a furry, gritty
quality -- pointless to use low-speed film, which one does in a
(futile) effort to get the (effortless) smoothness of digital
on film. How very retro. While (the right choice of) high-speed
B&W film produces a kind of burnished-brass look, a sort of
black glow that pleases me inordinately.
3/5/04. Neil's response:
I
fully agree...film is tough and gritty...a kind of Bogart-ean
cigarette stuck to lip, sooty lung phlegmy kind of grittiness.
A sort of loser private eye image of the world looking out of a
dirty back window into the lovelessness of an inner city
without empathy but with nonetheless a kind of solidity like
cast pewter...that is film and most especially the high speed
versions. Yes, quite correct, one must eschew slow speed films
unless one is shooting with a camera designed really for tripod
– i.e. large format - as a 35 is essentially a camera of
the heart...one shoots from instinct and not from intellect
with that machine...or should and thus the imagery ought, by
nature, to be shorn of pretense and designer formalism but
should rather be more like a machine gun shooting from the hip
with hot steel flying more or less in the same direction but
scattered by adrenaline, sweat and the excitement of the
moment.
Such
can surely be the role of the digital camera that takes up the
size and handiness of the 35mm. With its slowish image taking
regimen, this might take a few years, but it is upon us almost
as I write...soon, very soon, we shall have it all.
Ga-roan. Soon, very soon, we shall be dead, or unable to
read without a magnifying glass, much less work in Photoshop.
The tragedy of our generation. We wait a lifetime for the old
whore to part her legs, and when she does we're too old to get
it up.
3/12/04. So much for my correspondence on that topic. A
few more words and I'll give it a rest. Put some of the Contax
G2 film-test photos online with these notes:
I did a
series of test shots comparing G2/Zeiss photos with 10D/Canon
pictures of the same subject. The digital images are "better"
in the sense that they're free of grain and other visual noise.
However, the analog image is made up of disparate components
(irregular grain) that break smooth lines (on a small scale, of
course). The digital photo is like something downsampled from a
4x5 or 8x10, with the smooth transitions and slick look of large
format. By comparison, the analog image is dirty, funky,
anfractuous, irregular, nookshotten, fuzzy and warm, I dunno -
but different. Does that make it better? Certainly not. But it
does have its own look, just as 35mm has a look different from
medium format.
Not to be coy about it, if I could have
only one camera I'd certainly pick the 10D. Digital images can,
at least in principle, be turned into something with the
qualities of analog. The opposite isn't true.
However, I
already have a G2 kit of which I'm irrationally fond, and
there's a certain retro charm in rangefinders and wet
processing, which I've been doing since the 1950's while
patiently waiting for digital to arrive. Furthermore, for the
time being there's nothing digital that has the virtues of a G2
(or a Leica M). In particular, nothing now on sale will do
serious wide-angle work - except the Canon and Kodak full-frame
DSLR's, neither of which I can afford to buy.
An
interesting sidelight is the digital rangefinder soon on offer
from Epson/Cosina. (See www.dpreview.com.) But it has an
APS-sized sensor with no special tweaks to enable short-focus
without bad vignetting.
Ten years from now things will be
very different, but I'll also be ten years older, if indeed I'm
still alive. And there's always something better around the
corner. Alas, even early adopters have to live within their
means.
Thanks to all for intelligent comments. One in
particular deserves a good answer: "My guess, and you may
have been hinting at it when saying digital was like a
downsampled analog, is that film actually does capture more data
yet it doesn't look at clean exactly because it kept all the
detail while digital may keep more of the stronger details while
dismissing some smaller details, thus a cleaner look."
Think of music. When far-eastern musicians first heard
European "classical" music in the 19th century, they
often complained that it was "full of holes." They
created their own music on the assumption that there would be a
drone note, a bass line or some such "texture" (sorry
for all the quotation marks) laid under the melody, the way a
painter might start with scumbling or underpainting. Likewise,
Europeans accustomed to the music of Brahms and Beethoven were
surprised by the compositions of Stravinsky or (an extreme case)
von Webern, since the new music no longer used the repeated
figures and bass lines that served Wagner or R. Strauss as a
kind of laugh track.
OK, I'm biased, sue me. My point is
that most of the "information" in a negative is in
fact redundant, background noise which doesn't contribute to the
image's information content but does add a texture, a glow, a
patina, a "look." If you downsample a big negative,
that background noise is minimized, lost in the translation to a
lower res. If you do digital, assuming fairly large pixels that
don't need much signal boost, it isn't there to begin with.
That's what gives (good) digital images their slick, unctuous
quality. It's a wonderful trick, like putting a Deardorff in a
matchbox, and I'm grateful. However, the film look has its own
charm, which I'm trying to turn to my own purposes.
3/30/04. I think I've got it now. I know how to evoke
three different looks using B&W film, B&W digital and
digital in full color. Examples:
B&W film:
B&W digital:
Digital color:
6/21/04. Last month the G2 and Sonnar 90/2.8 spent a few
weeks in the Contax shop; the camera was focusing a bit closer
than it should've. Contax did a good job, repairing and
adjusting both camera and lens (under warranty) in pretty short
order.
This year I've used the G2 a lot.
I enjoy shooting with it – it's solid, feels good in the
hands, I can carry the camera and three lenses in a bag smaller
than a lunchbox, and the images I get are excellent. But it has
two drawbacks, one just annoying, the other a show-stopper that
limits the kit's usefulness:
Annoying: The finder
is miserably dim and small.
Abysmal: Autofocus is unreliable, especially with
the 90mm lens.
The problem with the G2's autofocus is that if you can't
focus the camera the shutter won't release, and the only focus
available is autofocus. The "manual focus" mode uses
autofocus to set the "manual" focus point –
there's no such thing as moving the lens till two images join in
the finder. That does help, since you can prefocus to a
particular distance by try-and-try-again trial-and-error. But it
helps less than I'd like, since the lens still indexes to
infinity between shots, which makes it almost impossible to
catch a fleeting pose or look. Compare this with the autofocus
of any Canon SLR, where manual focus really is manual, where
focus is reliable and quick and (with USM lenses) silent, and
where the lens damn well stays at its current focus point
between exposures.
The G2 has the drawbacks of autofocus without its benefits.
If its AF worked reliably the story would be different; alas, it
doesn't, especially with the Sonnar 90/2.8. Ironically, till
Contax overhauled my lens and camera I was willing to believe I
simply had a lemon. But while the G2/90mm combo does focus
accurately now, it has no more luck achieving focus than it did
before. Infurating when you frame a promising shot and press the
shutter release and nothing happens.
Result: When I set out to use film I now tend to take along
the Canon EOS 7, though I know the lenses can't hold a candle to
Contax/Zeiss, and I have nothing shorter than 28mm. The SLR's
bigger, but it's also quieter and has a decent finder. Odd to
think an SLR does a better job handheld than an all-auto
rangefinder, but that's the case. Oh well. It's the lenses,
stupid.
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