On the first of January, 1964 Bantam paperbacks published Simulacron-3 by Daniel F. Galouye. I was 13 going on 14 then. Sometime later, I don't know exactly, but it was certainly before 1966 I picked up a used copy of the paperback exactly as shown on the Wikipedia entry. It's one of a few books I read in my formative years that I remember vividly. The story was about marketing research being done by powerful AI computers. These computers create a simulated world of people to receive product marketing messages being tested. The extent to which marketing based on scientific (mainly psychological) research manifested itself in the 50's in the US was the subject of a book published in 1957 by Vance Packard called The Hidden Persuaders. Galouye, like Packard got his start in the newspaper business. I also read the Hidden Persuaders, but probably after I had read Simulacron-3.
The extent to which this book remained in my memory was largely unknown to me until the release in 1999 of The Thirteenth Floor, a movie by Josef Rusnak produced by the Emmerichs and executive produced by Michael Ballhaus. Ballhaus was Rainer Werner Fassbinder's cinematographer for 16 films in the 70's and in 1973 they made an adaption of Simulacron-3 for German Television called Welt Am Draht (World on a Wire). I think this was the only science fiction that Fassbinder made. I tried for many years after I learned of the Ballhaus link between The Thirteenth Floor and Welt am Draht in 1999 to see it. Several years ago I finally watched it from a PAL DVD on a cheap chinese DVD player that could transcode in real time to NTSC. Now, you don't have to go to such lengths as a Ballhaus supervised digital transfer is available on the Criterion Collection. If you have Hulu+ you can even stream that version. I intend to do that soon.
The topic of virtual reality seems closely related to the nature of reality in the first place. Psychological exploration of reality is a meme in science fiction and the imagery used, especially in television science fiction is fascinating. The use of mirror's is one such technique. Another motif is the presence in the frame of video monitor's, which can serve to show another version of reality, make references to other times and places or impute the presence of a 'watcher'.
Fassbinder's use of mirrors and monitors is discussed by Ed Halter in World on a Wire: The Hall of Mirrors . My first recollection of the use a monitor in a scifi movie came from Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times. I also want to mention, as Halter does that using monitor's these day's is a low budget option (not sure about the 30's) and was used quite effectively in television's Space 1999 series.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Wednesday, February 12, 2014
Retirement update, 1.5 years in.
I am in a good place, with Kathie, in Georgia near her extended family. We have a fairly rich life with family, new friends and the classes we have taken with the Brenau University Learning and Leisure Institute and the trips with it's hiking club every month.
I had an amazing backlog of books to read and several tech projects before retirement but I have not found the time yet for them. I think my book backlog is actually bigger now.
I had an amazing backlog of books to read and several tech projects before retirement but I have not found the time yet for them. I think my book backlog is actually bigger now.
Vacations still seem like vacations and are just as infrequent as when we worked. When I am at home, I don't feel like I am on vacation even though I am not working.
We are still trying to maintain the budget we created at retirement, it's not happened yet, but I don't feel stressed by money. Through out the day I have occasions when I feel like I am supposed to get back to work, but then I can't figure out what that might be. I don't follow IT technology as much as I used to and things are advancing away from me there. I am still keeping up with digital photography, technically at least, and am trying to bring some art into my work.
I have done some PC work for my Brother-in-Law, Joe, so I still know some computer troubleshooting and repair. I built a faster PC with a motherboard/processor swap and added a GPU to the mix. (Yes, I do have several photo software packages that can use the GPU) I have set up a home server and debugged it and just to prove that you can't be paranoid enough I purchased a CrashPlan family license and set that up. I discovered the author's of CrashPlan, code42 when I worked for the Medical School. We set up an in house system behind the firewall of the Health Systems network to offer workstation backup (PC, Mac and Linux) to our faculty and staff. Our sysadmins liked it too and used it as a second backup for some of our Linux servers. CrashPlan does do encryption before it sends data out so really no HIPPA worries there.
The personal client is quite nice, it has a scheduler and the ability to do multiple backups either to any attached drive or anyone else's computer running the client via a security token that you share, this is on top of code42's cloud servers. For no money then, as the client is free, one could set up a peer to peer backup system.
Well, that's the summary and I am sure I neglected to talk about something much more important than backup systems, but right now, I can't think of it.
I have done some PC work for my Brother-in-Law, Joe, so I still know some computer troubleshooting and repair. I built a faster PC with a motherboard/processor swap and added a GPU to the mix. (Yes, I do have several photo software packages that can use the GPU) I have set up a home server and debugged it and just to prove that you can't be paranoid enough I purchased a CrashPlan family license and set that up. I discovered the author's of CrashPlan, code42 when I worked for the Medical School. We set up an in house system behind the firewall of the Health Systems network to offer workstation backup (PC, Mac and Linux) to our faculty and staff. Our sysadmins liked it too and used it as a second backup for some of our Linux servers. CrashPlan does do encryption before it sends data out so really no HIPPA worries there.
The personal client is quite nice, it has a scheduler and the ability to do multiple backups either to any attached drive or anyone else's computer running the client via a security token that you share, this is on top of code42's cloud servers. For no money then, as the client is free, one could set up a peer to peer backup system.
Well, that's the summary and I am sure I neglected to talk about something much more important than backup systems, but right now, I can't think of it.
Monday, January 20, 2014
Camera nostaglia
I have just come back from a walk with our dog. It's fairly cold and very quiet this morning and my mind starts composing commentary. Yesterday it was about the sensory impressions during the walk and that one, like most of them, never made it out of my head. Today, it was about my personal camera history. Not very interesting to most. However, it's at one end of the spectrum of being a camera geek and I don't mean that in a flattering way. There is a current dialog among the photographic blogs that I follow which is filled with angst over camera equipment and what it means to photography. This is really another formulation of the impact of technology on western civilization. I have long realized that I am fascinated with technology. It started at a fairly young age, in the final two years of grade school. Some signal events that remain with me, some 50 years later. Making a slide rule with log graph paper, scissors, cardboard and glue in Math class. Making a metal detector with my genius friend in his room, he designed the circuit, I used scotch tape to secure twisted wires around a transistor, resistors and capacitors. It worked!
Some eight years later I purchased my first camera, a Canon Tlb and 50MM lens. I believe I purchased it at Woodward camera in Michigan. I am not sure why, except to say it was a technology. My dad had always had a 35MM camera, he preferred to buy used Kodak Retina fixed lens cameras. I never used one until much later. I remember one of the first 'technical' age gaps. Believing that SLR's were 'real' cameras, and those Kodak fixed lens cameras not up to date, I bought my Dad a Rolleiflex SL35M. He tried to use it, it broke once and needed repair under warranty (these were made in Singapore and had poor quality) and he never did get the hang of match needle metering. He went back to the Kodak's where it was all manual and one just looked at the Sun conditions and set shutter and aperture, one combination for bright Sun, another for cloudy and you winged it in-between.
I must have learned something about being too geeky, as I bought a Canonet QL17 for my future wife. Man, I wish we still had that camera, but it got passed on to a dear friend.
I must have learned something about the downsides of the inevitable march of technology when I purchased an 'upgrade' for my trustly Tlb, a Canon AE-1. That didn't last long, I really could not adapt to the automation. I sold that one on and went back to the mainly manual Tlb. That lasted until the 2nd or 3rd generation of autofocus camera's came on the scene. By then, I had built a darkroom, with an Omega enlarger, Componon lens, trays with working plumbing and a digital light timer. It is notable, in my mind at least, that I built the digital timer myself. It was one of the first solid state circuits that I ever understood, a simple 555 timer and digital logic which I understood. Analog transistors had somehow eluded me, but digital seemed perfectly clear.
Still, I was convinced that following the Ansel Adams Zone system in my darkroom, an extensive series of test exposures and development variants carefully recorded in a notebook, to calibrate my camera to zones, would make me a better photographer. This is not so much different to this day, but magnified by the endless supply of digital source.. How many raw processors have I tried? I am embarrassed to say. How many test exposures have I taken? And, this despite knowing that after all my technical hard work with the Zone system, I still did not take better photo's. That was the lesson that I had ignored in Adam's writings, focused instead upon the mastery of technological artifacts and processes, I had missed the actual ability to 'see' a photograph before the shot!
Some eight years later I purchased my first camera, a Canon Tlb and 50MM lens. I believe I purchased it at Woodward camera in Michigan. I am not sure why, except to say it was a technology. My dad had always had a 35MM camera, he preferred to buy used Kodak Retina fixed lens cameras. I never used one until much later. I remember one of the first 'technical' age gaps. Believing that SLR's were 'real' cameras, and those Kodak fixed lens cameras not up to date, I bought my Dad a Rolleiflex SL35M. He tried to use it, it broke once and needed repair under warranty (these were made in Singapore and had poor quality) and he never did get the hang of match needle metering. He went back to the Kodak's where it was all manual and one just looked at the Sun conditions and set shutter and aperture, one combination for bright Sun, another for cloudy and you winged it in-between.
I must have learned something about being too geeky, as I bought a Canonet QL17 for my future wife. Man, I wish we still had that camera, but it got passed on to a dear friend.
I must have learned something about the downsides of the inevitable march of technology when I purchased an 'upgrade' for my trustly Tlb, a Canon AE-1. That didn't last long, I really could not adapt to the automation. I sold that one on and went back to the mainly manual Tlb. That lasted until the 2nd or 3rd generation of autofocus camera's came on the scene. By then, I had built a darkroom, with an Omega enlarger, Componon lens, trays with working plumbing and a digital light timer. It is notable, in my mind at least, that I built the digital timer myself. It was one of the first solid state circuits that I ever understood, a simple 555 timer and digital logic which I understood. Analog transistors had somehow eluded me, but digital seemed perfectly clear.
Still, I was convinced that following the Ansel Adams Zone system in my darkroom, an extensive series of test exposures and development variants carefully recorded in a notebook, to calibrate my camera to zones, would make me a better photographer. This is not so much different to this day, but magnified by the endless supply of digital source.. How many raw processors have I tried? I am embarrassed to say. How many test exposures have I taken? And, this despite knowing that after all my technical hard work with the Zone system, I still did not take better photo's. That was the lesson that I had ignored in Adam's writings, focused instead upon the mastery of technological artifacts and processes, I had missed the actual ability to 'see' a photograph before the shot!
Friday, January 10, 2014
Hey, a new post ! Camera hardware again
The weather has been gray and drizzly since the great Polar Vortex headed north of us. In other words, not much inclination to go out and take photo's. I am really happy with the family photo's I took over the Christmas holiday (Pre-Vortex), which you can find here: Christmas 2013 . Since then I have been staying indoors and scanning lot's of old family photo's ranging from the early to late twentieth century.
Just today, I read a post over at the SoundImagePlus blog that pretty much explained the reasons why David Taylor-Hughes no longer uses his micro 4/3 gear. My reason's for switching to the Fuji X-System are similar. The reason I switched to micro 4/3 from my Nikon D300, which I was very happy with both operationally and image quality wise, was the weight and size. Carrying the D300 plus lens kit around all day when on vacation was painful. By using the photographic pixel peeping section of the internet I was able to convince myself that four-thirds and then micro four-thirds had the image quality to complete with the D300. I was wrong about that as it turns out, but I had made the commitment and believed that sensor's would improve over time plus lens quality could be exceptional. By the time the OM-D E-M5 was released, I had sold off the Nikon D300 and lenses and then the panasonic G1 and G3 and Olympus E-PL1 to switch to it. It was to be the last camera I bought since I was retiring soon and would no longer have the income to afford this hardware obsessed hobby that digital cameras are. I was pretty happy with the E-M5 results and had acquired over the years some good lenses for it, in particular, the PanaLeica 25MM F1.4 and the Olympus 9-18MM zoom. My gamble on the constant improvement in camera + sensor coupled with the excellent lens selection seemed to pay off. Then I had my E-M5 and it's kit zoom along with a bag and accessories stolen. Just then the E-M1 was a near term future and I decided to wait a bit to replace the E-M5 as I had a cheap E-PM2 with the same sensor in it and still had my high quality lenses.
I then started reading about the Fuji X-System and it's high ISO abilities coupled with a superb line of (affordable) lenses. That got me to thinking about what micro four-thirds still hadn't accomplished compared to the now ancient D300. That was high ISO shooting. As it turns out, I quite like taking available light photo's both for family occasions as well as travel. I am not a strobist. Even with F1.4 the E-M5 shot's at indoor museums and sights needed the ISO cranked up quite high. I had learned that going much beyond ISO 800 was going to yield too much noise for my tastes. That had led to lower shutter speeds and despite excellent image stabilization I had a lot of unusable shots. So that got me to thinking, how much size and weight would I have to sacrifice to move on to the Fuji X-System, and would it's high ISO actually work in practice as well as it did on the Internet pixel peeping comparisons. I did a physical comparison with the E-M5 with the PanaLeica 25MM F1.4 and the Panasonic 14MM F2.5 that I owned. For the Fuji, I used the XE-1 along with the 35MM F1.4 and 18MM F2 as these are basically equivalent (except for depth of field).
Just today, I read a post over at the SoundImagePlus blog that pretty much explained the reasons why David Taylor-Hughes no longer uses his micro 4/3 gear. My reason's for switching to the Fuji X-System are similar. The reason I switched to micro 4/3 from my Nikon D300, which I was very happy with both operationally and image quality wise, was the weight and size. Carrying the D300 plus lens kit around all day when on vacation was painful. By using the photographic pixel peeping section of the internet I was able to convince myself that four-thirds and then micro four-thirds had the image quality to complete with the D300. I was wrong about that as it turns out, but I had made the commitment and believed that sensor's would improve over time plus lens quality could be exceptional. By the time the OM-D E-M5 was released, I had sold off the Nikon D300 and lenses and then the panasonic G1 and G3 and Olympus E-PL1 to switch to it. It was to be the last camera I bought since I was retiring soon and would no longer have the income to afford this hardware obsessed hobby that digital cameras are. I was pretty happy with the E-M5 results and had acquired over the years some good lenses for it, in particular, the PanaLeica 25MM F1.4 and the Olympus 9-18MM zoom. My gamble on the constant improvement in camera + sensor coupled with the excellent lens selection seemed to pay off. Then I had my E-M5 and it's kit zoom along with a bag and accessories stolen. Just then the E-M1 was a near term future and I decided to wait a bit to replace the E-M5 as I had a cheap E-PM2 with the same sensor in it and still had my high quality lenses.
I then started reading about the Fuji X-System and it's high ISO abilities coupled with a superb line of (affordable) lenses. That got me to thinking about what micro four-thirds still hadn't accomplished compared to the now ancient D300. That was high ISO shooting. As it turns out, I quite like taking available light photo's both for family occasions as well as travel. I am not a strobist. Even with F1.4 the E-M5 shot's at indoor museums and sights needed the ISO cranked up quite high. I had learned that going much beyond ISO 800 was going to yield too much noise for my tastes. That had led to lower shutter speeds and despite excellent image stabilization I had a lot of unusable shots. So that got me to thinking, how much size and weight would I have to sacrifice to move on to the Fuji X-System, and would it's high ISO actually work in practice as well as it did on the Internet pixel peeping comparisons. I did a physical comparison with the E-M5 with the PanaLeica 25MM F1.4 and the Panasonic 14MM F2.5 that I owned. For the Fuji, I used the XE-1 along with the 35MM F1.4 and 18MM F2 as these are basically equivalent (except for depth of field).
| Width | Height | Depth with Lens | Weight with Lens | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| E-M5 + 25mm | 4.8 | 3.5 | 3.9 | 21.1 |
| X-E1 + 35mm | 5.1 | 2.9 | 3.5 | 18.9 |
| E-M5 + 14MM | 4.8 | 3.5 | 2.5 | 16.1 |
| X-E1 + 18MM | 5.1 | 2.9 | 2.8 | 16.4 |
| E-M5 + 75-300 | 4.8 | 3.5 | 6.3 | 29.1 |
| X-E1 + 50-230 | 5.1 | 2.9 | 5.9 | 25.5 |
Suprised? So was I. The situation at the very long end and the very wide end was still going to favor micro four thirds but in the middle where 80% of my shots are taken, well, no sacrifice at all! Being cautious I came up with the idea of buying a Fuji X-M1 plus kit lens that I found at a great price. It would be my high ISO camera if the image quality was good. Not only was the image quality good, it was the equal or better to the E-M5 (at least for my uses) and the high ISO while not quite as noise free as Internet would have you believe, was very good up to ISO 3200 and 6400 in a pinch. Then the X-E2 was released. I pre-ordered it and proceeded to sell everything I could on e-Bay including some legacy Zeiss full frame len's that I was hoping to use on adapters eventually. The X-E2 handling was good enough to compete with the OM-D series and I saw no point in continuing on with micro four-thirds.
Another point that David made was the micro four-thirds gear lost it's value rapidly. That's true for the camera bodies and the kit lens, but not true for the high quality lens line up. I lost a little money on lens sales but between micro four-thirds and Zeiss Contax I was able to buy the X-E2 and the 14MM F2.8 wide angle along with the 18MM F2 to augment the kit zoom. I did not buy any of this new, I got them at demo and used prices, about 80% of new.
It was true that the going price for my E-PM2 and the 14MM F2.5 was so low that it was not worth the effort to put them on e-bay. The E-PM2 and 14MM are actually pocketable, though I find myself using the Fuji's anyway. The X-M1 is almost the same size and 2 Oz heavier than the E-PM2......and there is a nice 27MM Fuji pancake out there that is slightly larger and heavier than the 14MM F2.5 panasonic! Now, what else can I sell on e-bay :)
Tuesday, December 24, 2013
Why I don't post more often, perhaps diffraction effects are working in my brain :)
Last Thursday I decided I would do some photographic tests to see just what Fuji's LMO or Lens Modulation Optimizer does compared to not using it. I did some shots of the trunk of a paper bark tree around the neighborhood. This was probably not the best choice of test subject, since only a narrow band would be in the area of focus. I have plenty of brick wall's to shot but the proverbial joke about folks taking pictures of brick wall's instead of 'real' photographs is in my mind whenever I see one and am tempted to take some 'demo' shots.
So, I found the area of focus and created a table of 500 x 500 pixel extracts from each aperture with LMO turned on. To create the non-LMO comparison I decided I would use a raw converter since LMO is only applied to Fuji's in camera raw to jpeg engine. Of course the obvious solution, which I realized only last night, was to use the Fuji's in camera raw engine to develop the exact same way but with LMO off. That would be the KISS way to do it. And no, I do not mean the rock band KISS. So perhaps it was for the best that I got caught up in a protracted search for more information. Here's what happened and why this comparison is still unpublished.
First distraction was using the raw converter, I have Photo Ninja and that was my first choice. The color's are not the same as Fuji's jpegs and I can't really get them the same in post processing as I am a little color challenged. While I was doing the post processing I realized that I also have a deconvolution sharpening plugin from Focus Magic and I could use that and compare it to the Fuji LMO results. It has been claimed, but not by Fuji, that I can find, the LMO is a deconvolution operation. Fuji does claim that it works selectively between the edge's to the center of the image. Straight deconvolution, like used by Focus Magic, would effect the entire image equally.
So off I went to do some research and see if I could find more sophisticated deconvolution software to compare against the Fuji. It was then that I found some old code created by John Costella over a 2 year period and released in 2001. http://johncostella.com/unblur/ I then got distracted from there because he had developed this code to process the infamous Zapruder film of the JFK assassination. The results of this sharpening and reconstruction of the film frame by frame was claimed to prove that the film was significantly altered if not faked in it's entirety. It's not my intention to weigh in on that argument, but I did find it interesting and it in turn lead me back into the seemingly endless material on the assassination. I spent a few hours on that before I realized I dropping down the rabbit hole again.
Then preparations for Christmas began and I needed to take some holiday photo's and do other things.
So that's how that happens with me, I start out to do one thing, then a small amount of second guessing sends me to the internet to make sure I am not making a fool of myself, which seems nearly impossible to prove on the internet :) I feel like I am an internet James Burke with a new series of 'Connections' episodes. Before I know it, day's if not weeks have passed, I have pursued and dropped several other lines of research and have lost my zeal for posting anything at all. Then I have a break through as described above and am now thinking of going out with my tripod and using a brick wall.....
But wait a minute, have I actually examined the evidence I do have in hand? Not closely it turns out, so I spend some time with that and it looks like I can see differences in detail both between lmo on and off and between lmo and focus magic. Better yet, the differences are greater at higher apertures where diffraction blurring is most pronounced.
So, I found the area of focus and created a table of 500 x 500 pixel extracts from each aperture with LMO turned on. To create the non-LMO comparison I decided I would use a raw converter since LMO is only applied to Fuji's in camera raw to jpeg engine. Of course the obvious solution, which I realized only last night, was to use the Fuji's in camera raw engine to develop the exact same way but with LMO off. That would be the KISS way to do it. And no, I do not mean the rock band KISS. So perhaps it was for the best that I got caught up in a protracted search for more information. Here's what happened and why this comparison is still unpublished.
First distraction was using the raw converter, I have Photo Ninja and that was my first choice. The color's are not the same as Fuji's jpegs and I can't really get them the same in post processing as I am a little color challenged. While I was doing the post processing I realized that I also have a deconvolution sharpening plugin from Focus Magic and I could use that and compare it to the Fuji LMO results. It has been claimed, but not by Fuji, that I can find, the LMO is a deconvolution operation. Fuji does claim that it works selectively between the edge's to the center of the image. Straight deconvolution, like used by Focus Magic, would effect the entire image equally.
So off I went to do some research and see if I could find more sophisticated deconvolution software to compare against the Fuji. It was then that I found some old code created by John Costella over a 2 year period and released in 2001. http://johncostella.com/unblur/ I then got distracted from there because he had developed this code to process the infamous Zapruder film of the JFK assassination. The results of this sharpening and reconstruction of the film frame by frame was claimed to prove that the film was significantly altered if not faked in it's entirety. It's not my intention to weigh in on that argument, but I did find it interesting and it in turn lead me back into the seemingly endless material on the assassination. I spent a few hours on that before I realized I dropping down the rabbit hole again.
Then preparations for Christmas began and I needed to take some holiday photo's and do other things.
So that's how that happens with me, I start out to do one thing, then a small amount of second guessing sends me to the internet to make sure I am not making a fool of myself, which seems nearly impossible to prove on the internet :) I feel like I am an internet James Burke with a new series of 'Connections' episodes. Before I know it, day's if not weeks have passed, I have pursued and dropped several other lines of research and have lost my zeal for posting anything at all. Then I have a break through as described above and am now thinking of going out with my tripod and using a brick wall.....
But wait a minute, have I actually examined the evidence I do have in hand? Not closely it turns out, so I spend some time with that and it looks like I can see differences in detail both between lmo on and off and between lmo and focus magic. Better yet, the differences are greater at higher apertures where diffraction blurring is most pronounced.
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Generational change in photography
Two recent blog posts by photographic bloggers that I follow, Kirk Tuck here: http://visualsciencelab.blogspot.it/2013/10/the-graying-of-traditional-photography.html and David Taylor-Hughes here: http://soundimageplus.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/unapologetically-old-school-continuing.html discuss the notion that generational change is changing photography (or at least the photography market).
I don't agree about the generation gap but then it's not black and white, 100% one cause or the other.
This discourse is much more complicated than any one of us will be able to explicate. It's complicated because several orthogonal issues are involved. One of those is our attitudes towards technology which is coupled with our attitudes towards change. Another issue is the nature of market driven change in technology dominated industries, of which photography is firmly planted. Finally there is the issue of ageism or age discrimination, is it the same as saying the old guard doesn't "get it"? I have a 30+ years of professional experience in IT and 30+ years of amateur experience in photography, which means I am a member of the cohort who is clinging on to the past in the face of tumultuous change.
Change and lack of it. A contradiction. Change is the one constant in IT, yet old stuff that works hangs around seemingly forever. The change comes with newly installed systems. I once did a survey of web servers on our intra-network and discovered that the release level of the software was much pretty much stuck at the level it was when installed, no matter how long the server had been running. Some people are reluctant to change expertise while others are eager to move on to something new. In my experience, neither one is associated with age except that it's widely assumed that the older you are the less you know about new stuff. That assumption is ageism. I think a lot of it has do with the individual, did you have to struggle to acquire expertise or understanding? If so, you are more likely to resist change. Do you like to be challenged or prefer a relaxed stability? This leads us to another issue:
Do you revel in the means and methods of photography? This is not orthogonal to having what I will call the artistic eye, but you can do one without the other, or both. Back in the film/chemistry days both Edward Weston and Ansel Adams did darkroom work with chemicals. But there was a vast gap between the 'geekiness' between the two. Adams was a technical nerd while Weston was not. Both had great artistic vision.
I spent of lot time 'calibrating' my photography workflow from exposure to printing, based on Adam's writings, it was very technical and right up my alley, but it did little to nothing to make me a better photographer. Then, as today, my best shots are opportunistic that just happen to work out. My planning for shots is rather sterile, technically good (or not :) but not artistic.
The old farts are missing the market, they don't get it. Established technology companies can loose their way not because they are run by a bunch of 50 yr old + executives. It's far too easy to say that the 50 year old cohort is stuck in the past. What they are really stuck in is capitalism. To be a successful large company means you meet your sales figures every quarter and to do that you ask your existing clients what they want from you. And they pretty much tell you that they want more of the same, incrementally improved and made cheaper. That great disruptive invention in the lab your team came up with, well, the sales projections show that it will not make a measurable impact on your sales goals, you have to let it slide for now. Maybe next year your clients will ask for it. The problem is, that by the time your clients ask for it, it's being provided by a start-up company whose sales are great for their size but inconsequential for yours until they start selling into your client base.
Not all large companies and senior executives behave this way, Steve Job's started his turn-around of Apple when he was 42 and kept it up until he was 55. Notably, what makes Applelarge today is not what the company did for most of it's life, i.e. make PC's.
To all the claims that photography workflow will be dominated by ease of transfer to social media, all I can say is that cell phones do the entire workflow quite well, or good enough for the majority, right now. That disruptive train has left the station and won't be coming back in until the next disruption. So where does that leave Nikon, Canon and Sony, not to leave out Fujifilm, Pentax, Panasonic, Olympus, Sigma and Ricoh? I am not sure. I don't think providing ease of publishing to social media will turn things around, it won't hurt but it won't replace the cell phone camera. They all are iterating the past, some with more panache than others. Are any of them trying to disrupt the market? Still not clear. Is micro four-thirds or Nikon/Sony CX or Pentax Q disruptive? Doesn't seem that way, it could be argued that all those products are just incremental improvements or variations on the same configuration of technologies. Could Lytro be disruptive? Could be, time will tell, but I doubt it because of how photographs are used.
Here is what I think drives photography disruption: How are the photographs used?
Professionally via prints or electronic distribution, i.e. fine art, advertising, event recording.
Personally via prints or electronic distribution, i.e 4x6 mass market printing and the internet. (maybe photo frames?)
I think cell phones handle most of the personal use. For those situations where they don't I see all kinds of people form all kinds of ages using DSLR's and mirrorless. I see the existing cameras handling the professional needs as well. Those needs will have change in a substantial way to drive disruption.
Disruption in the existing use means simpler and cheaper, it's hard for me to imagine anything else coming along other that what we already have or have seen. But then that's the nature of the future, largely unknowable.
Disruption could also be in a new use for photography. I can't tell you what that might be, once again, it's large unknowable until it's revealed. Maybe someone has seen a small niche that can't be served by the existing technology and a new kind of product is serving that market?
I don't agree about the generation gap but then it's not black and white, 100% one cause or the other.
This discourse is much more complicated than any one of us will be able to explicate. It's complicated because several orthogonal issues are involved. One of those is our attitudes towards technology which is coupled with our attitudes towards change. Another issue is the nature of market driven change in technology dominated industries, of which photography is firmly planted. Finally there is the issue of ageism or age discrimination, is it the same as saying the old guard doesn't "get it"? I have a 30+ years of professional experience in IT and 30+ years of amateur experience in photography, which means I am a member of the cohort who is clinging on to the past in the face of tumultuous change.
Change and lack of it. A contradiction. Change is the one constant in IT, yet old stuff that works hangs around seemingly forever. The change comes with newly installed systems. I once did a survey of web servers on our intra-network and discovered that the release level of the software was much pretty much stuck at the level it was when installed, no matter how long the server had been running. Some people are reluctant to change expertise while others are eager to move on to something new. In my experience, neither one is associated with age except that it's widely assumed that the older you are the less you know about new stuff. That assumption is ageism. I think a lot of it has do with the individual, did you have to struggle to acquire expertise or understanding? If so, you are more likely to resist change. Do you like to be challenged or prefer a relaxed stability? This leads us to another issue:
Do you revel in the means and methods of photography? This is not orthogonal to having what I will call the artistic eye, but you can do one without the other, or both. Back in the film/chemistry days both Edward Weston and Ansel Adams did darkroom work with chemicals. But there was a vast gap between the 'geekiness' between the two. Adams was a technical nerd while Weston was not. Both had great artistic vision.
I spent of lot time 'calibrating' my photography workflow from exposure to printing, based on Adam's writings, it was very technical and right up my alley, but it did little to nothing to make me a better photographer. Then, as today, my best shots are opportunistic that just happen to work out. My planning for shots is rather sterile, technically good (or not :) but not artistic.
The old farts are missing the market, they don't get it. Established technology companies can loose their way not because they are run by a bunch of 50 yr old + executives. It's far too easy to say that the 50 year old cohort is stuck in the past. What they are really stuck in is capitalism. To be a successful large company means you meet your sales figures every quarter and to do that you ask your existing clients what they want from you. And they pretty much tell you that they want more of the same, incrementally improved and made cheaper. That great disruptive invention in the lab your team came up with, well, the sales projections show that it will not make a measurable impact on your sales goals, you have to let it slide for now. Maybe next year your clients will ask for it. The problem is, that by the time your clients ask for it, it's being provided by a start-up company whose sales are great for their size but inconsequential for yours until they start selling into your client base.
Not all large companies and senior executives behave this way, Steve Job's started his turn-around of Apple when he was 42 and kept it up until he was 55. Notably, what makes Applelarge today is not what the company did for most of it's life, i.e. make PC's.
To all the claims that photography workflow will be dominated by ease of transfer to social media, all I can say is that cell phones do the entire workflow quite well, or good enough for the majority, right now. That disruptive train has left the station and won't be coming back in until the next disruption. So where does that leave Nikon, Canon and Sony, not to leave out Fujifilm, Pentax, Panasonic, Olympus, Sigma and Ricoh? I am not sure. I don't think providing ease of publishing to social media will turn things around, it won't hurt but it won't replace the cell phone camera. They all are iterating the past, some with more panache than others. Are any of them trying to disrupt the market? Still not clear. Is micro four-thirds or Nikon/Sony CX or Pentax Q disruptive? Doesn't seem that way, it could be argued that all those products are just incremental improvements or variations on the same configuration of technologies. Could Lytro be disruptive? Could be, time will tell, but I doubt it because of how photographs are used.
Here is what I think drives photography disruption: How are the photographs used?
Professionally via prints or electronic distribution, i.e. fine art, advertising, event recording.
Personally via prints or electronic distribution, i.e 4x6 mass market printing and the internet. (maybe photo frames?)
I think cell phones handle most of the personal use. For those situations where they don't I see all kinds of people form all kinds of ages using DSLR's and mirrorless. I see the existing cameras handling the professional needs as well. Those needs will have change in a substantial way to drive disruption.
Disruption in the existing use means simpler and cheaper, it's hard for me to imagine anything else coming along other that what we already have or have seen. But then that's the nature of the future, largely unknowable.
Disruption could also be in a new use for photography. I can't tell you what that might be, once again, it's large unknowable until it's revealed. Maybe someone has seen a small niche that can't be served by the existing technology and a new kind of product is serving that market?
Sunday, August 11, 2013
Old vs New
My intended followup to my last entry is postponed, pun intended. Looking at my history of photographs got me interested in checking out some 'legacy' lenses. This has been far more complicated than I thought. I did not want to use a static indoor test scene with resolution chart embedded because I wanted to see if this phenomena of 'rendering an image' would also impact results. Probably the most repeated tests, simply because I wanted the results to be different, were between a Zeiss Contax T* Distagon 28MM F2.8 made for the Contax SLR, and a Leica Panasonic Summilux 25mm F1.4 made for a micro four thirds camera. I used an Olympus E-PM2 since my EM-5 was stolen. This is an outdoor shoot, in late afternoon, bright sun from a tripod and with the PanaLeica set to F2.8. Here those shots are:
The first is from the PanaLeica and three things are apparent even at a small size, it's sharper, more detailed and better contrast. (These are OOC JPEG's with the same settings). These were manually focused and the focus point was the same in each one, a knot in the wood.
One could argue that the Zeiss should be stopped down as much as the Leica, but it won't change the results. The Zeiss get's better up to F5.6 but it's still not as good as the Leica at F2.8. One could also argue that since both these lens were made in Japan, they are not true Zeiss nor Leica, yet both companies allowed their names to be used singly and prominently branded Zeiss and Leica by Contax and Panasonic.
My explanation is two fold, but I will likely never test it out. First off, the Zeiss is made to cover twice as large an area, it could be used on a full frame camera so using it on the PM2 was never in it's design parameters, secondly the Leica is newer technology made for the camera it was used with. So I believe that it's off to eBay for the Zeiss. As much as the name and build lends some prestige the results surely do not.
If I am right in my explanations of the differences, we have an example of how engineering in the past cannot anticipate the needs of the future. But this is just one sample and it's possible that either this Zeiss lens or this Olympus camera are just not compatible with each other....I have another Zeiss Contax, the 50MM F1.7 and I can put that to the test, what I don't have is a comparable lens for the Olympus, just standard 40-150mm zoom... More later
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