Photoshop Time Travel and New Fuji Camera!

 "1982+2005, Paris, France" by Chino Otsuka

Chino Otsuka, a London-based photographer, is working on an interesting series of self-portraits, which pairs the present day photographer with herself from the past. She takes old family photographs of herself and inserts new self-portraits of herself into the old pictures, using Photoshop to age the new images to match the old. This is done seamlessly and the images play with the notions of self and the passing of time. Otsuka wrote this passage about this series:

If,

again

I have a chance to meet,

there is so much I want to ask,

and so much I want to tell.

"1980+2009, Nagayama, Japan" by Chino Otsuka

You can see her images at her own website and at the blog, My Modern Met. Otsuka has also published a book of these images, titled Photo Album. Check them out.

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Also, in a bit of unrelated news, Fuji will officially announce a new camera in their X-series of cameras, the X-T1. They released a teaser photo of it and it looks like Fuji is aiming for some of Olympus' territory. The X-T1 is styled after SLR's of the past with a faux-pentaprism in the middle of the top and plenty of dials to complete that nostaglia-ridden aesthetic. They will formally announce the camera on January 28th and we will discover what it can do then. I'm not sure this camera is really needed, since Fuji already has the excellent and well-regarded X-E2, but what do I know? Camera companies seem to be spending a lot of time looking backwards for inspiration these days.

Humans of New York vs. Creative Art

 photo by Brandon Stanton

I recently heard a news story/interview on The Humans of New York, which started out as a blog and has now become a New York Times bestselling book. The person behind the work, Brandon Stanton, takes portraits of people he encounters while walking around the city. He asks if he can photograph them and then interviews them and includes a bit of the interview with the photograph, which provides a bit of context to the portraits. Stanton makes a lot of these portraits. In the interview I heard, Stanton came across as humble and even a bit overwhelmed by the attention his work is gathering. He was charming enough that I was predisposed to like this work even before I saw it. You can see the work here.

Nick Vossbrink, a photographer working out of San Francisco, wrote an essay called "I'm Tired of 'White Guy' Photography Projects" that is marginally about the Humans of New York project and categorized the work as colonial photography which examines other cultures alien to the photographer’s point of view in an attempt to explain that culture to outsiders in a condescending manner. You can read his essay here. National Geographic is the primary example of this approach to photography, though they are far from the first to use this model of working. August Sanders seminal work of documenting the German people is another or Jacob Riis, whose work serve served to expose the dangers and destitution of New York ghettos of the late 1800s, are other earlier examples.

In fact, using photography to examine and understand other cultures and people and ways of life is as old as photography itself. It’s part of what photography is; a way of looking at the world and figuring out how everything works. But Vossbrink has an interesting point to make concerning photography.

Vossbrink said in his essay:

“To see the same approach taken towards non-white or non-mainstream cultures now feels old and stale. And with almost everyone having the tools to document and represent themselves now, it starts treading into self-serving, patronizing, white-guilt behavior too.

The colonial view doesn’t work for me anymore. At its best, I find it boring. At its worst, I find it racist. In almost all cases I’m tired of it.”

So does his point have merit? Perhaps. I do think we have moved past the idea of photographing indigenous peoples in far-away, exotic locales and have it be anything but insulting and patronizing to the people depicted. But is the idea finished completely as a mode of seeing? I find that hard to believe.

And that’s the thing with creative endeavors. It is up to the artists to come up with something new. If we rely on the tried and true, what has been done before, we face the prospects of creating art that is tired and stale. That is why certain kinds of photography really are kind of boring, when it comes right down to it. And photographs can be boring and beautiful at the same time, if the image has nothing new to say. Things like landscape photography and nudes are mostly just retreading old ground and repeating images styles that border on being tropes. New takes on these subjects are rare. And that’s what Vossbrink is reacting to in his essay. All too often Stanton gives us the same “Oh, look at the weirdo in the big city” kind of image that we’ve seen time and time again, from people like Diane Arbus and Weegee. For urbanites, these images are comforting and familiar. For rural folks, they are the evidence supporting all their preconceptions about the people in big cities.

So is Humans of New York patronizing and boring? Not really, though the skills of the photographer aren’t particularly strong. Stanton’s images are sometimes mediocre, bordering on student work, if I have to be honest, but it is the quotes and the stories that go along with the images that elevate them out of mediocrity. This work is about more than the images, which is usually the case with successful art; the meaning of a piece of art extends past the surface image of the artwork. It is the context of the art and its subject and its maker's intent that makes for good art. Is this great photography? No, but it is good photography that is worth looking at and that is something far from boring. And I suspect that Stanton is a photographer to watch and pay attention to.

New Stuff From Sony and Sigma!

The rumors have been flying around the Web that Sony was going to introduce a mirrorless, interchangeable lens camera system, similar to their NEX cameras, and that's what they've done. Sony has just announced the A7 and the A7r. The A7 will have a 24 MP sensor and the A7r will sport a 36 MP sensor with no anti-aliasing filter for maximum sharpness. Both models will have a built-in OLED EVF finder. The cameras will feature a tiltable LED screen, focus peaking, and weather-sealing. The cameras will accept current NEX APS-C lenses, though some vignetting will occur, and Sony will also offer an adapter so you can use full frame lenses from their regular full-frame cameras. The A7 body will sell for $1698 and the A7r body will sell for $2198.

Sony will also introduce a handful of new lenses for the cameras: a Zeiss FE 24-70mm f/4 OSS, a Sony G 28-70mm f/3.5-5.6 OSS, a Zeiss FE 35mm f/2.8, a Zeiss FE 55mm f/1.8, and a Zeiss FE 70-200mm f/4 OSS. This promises to be an exciting new system for pro photographers. Full frame images with smaller cameras and lenses. What's not to love?

And finally, Sigma is introducing a new lens, the 24-105mm f/4 DG OS HSM Art lens. The Sigma Art lenses emphasize image quality and sharpness, so this will probably be a lens to check out. It will have a fairly large filter size of 82mm, which means that they will have more room to play with in refining the optics for maximum effect. The physically smaller the lens, the less room you have to correct for optical problems. This lens will compete directly with the Canon 24-105mm f/4 IS L lens and it will be interesting to see how they compare. No word yet on its price.

Digital Bolex D16 Footage Has Been Seen

I have to admit that the news about this camera has seemed to pass me by, even though it's been talked about for almost 2 years. It's still not quite available, but Bolex has made some footage from the new camera available to view on their website. The low light capabilities are impressive.

This camera is supposed to sell for less than a new Canon 5D Mark III and it seems to fit a similar niche that the Blackmagic cinema cameras do. And it can mount a wider range of lenses and shoots RAW footage, so that is all good. But what is that crank on the side of the camera for? And I even like 1950s Space Age aesthetic to the design. Retro and Modern at the same time. Go to Bolex here to watch the sample videos and learn more about it.

Olympus Introduces Its New Flagship Camera

Olympus has introduced a new camera, the OM-D E-M1. Like the already existing E-M5, the E-M1 is a Micro Four-Thirds camera styled after DSLRs, but this one is intended to be their new top of the line model. It will have a 16 MP sensor and a host of features, like dust-, splash-, and freeze-proof construction, tilting touchscreen LCD, 2.36 MP EVF viewing, 5-axis image stabilization, PC sync terminal, full HD video, built-in WiFi, focus peaking, 10 fps shooting, and something new called Color Creator, which allows the user to adjust color from the top of the camera. Interesting. It seems like the added grip is a good idea for this camera. The original OM-D E-M5 has always felt a little small to me, so a bigger grip would help that.

 

The body alone will run around $1400 and for around $1950, you can get the E-M1 with the new M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 12-40mm f/2.8 PRO lens, which is weather sealed, features a constant aperture of f/2.8, and which is equivalent to a 24-80mm lens in full-frame terms. Olympus also has another PRO lens in the works, an M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 40-150mm f/2.8 PRO, which is equivalent to an 80-300mm lens. With these new offerings, Olympus is creating a pro-level system that will be a real competitor to full frame camera systems from Nikon and Canon, and competition is good for everyone, of course.

Lomography Brings Back the Petzval!

It's kind of funny that as digital photography achieves ever higher resolution and lower noise (grain), photographers feel compelled to resist the inherent sharpness that digital offers. Lensbaby has done well for themselves by making lenses that offers generally poor optical quality. Now don't get me wrong, I own and use Lensbaby products myself and dearly love them, but they are not the pinnacle of lens sharpness and aberration-free designs. But maybe that's why we love them. It's their optical quirkiness that attracts us.

Anyway, in a similar vein, Lomography is introducing a "new" lens that is actually the resurrection of a quite ancient lens, the Petzval portrait lens, which was designed by Joseph Petzval in 1840 while he lived in Vienna, Austria. His lens was quite revolutionary for its time with a fast f/3.6 aperture (the only other rival lens had an aperture of f/15!) and more than adequate sharpness, especially in the center. One of the optical qualities that set it apart from modern lenses is that while modern lenses try to maximize sharpness from corner to corner and make the center of the image as sharp as the edges, Petzval's lens only achieved critical sharpness in the center. This is referred to as flatness of field, which the Petzval didn't have, but it did have a way of separating the center subject from the background that was not matched by any other lens.

So Lomography is working with the Russian optical company Zenit to make a new version of the Petzval  lens, while keeping the brass aesthetics of the original and offering them in current Nikon and Canon mounts. It will be an 85mm f/2.2 manual focus, of course, lens that uses fixed, slide-in Waterhouse stops for its apertures from f/2.2 to f/16, and they are saying that the results it will give are nearly impossible to duplicate by digital means. They are running a Kickstarter campaign to fund the manufacture of these lenses and you can read about their project here. Sounds kind of cool and the image examples they have are really beautiful. I'll follow this project with a great deal of interest.

LightZone is Now Free!

LightZone, a non-destructive photo-editing program somewhat based on Ansel Adams's Zone System, debuted in 2005 and was created by Light Crafts, Inc. It offered a more visual-based approach to image and tone manipulation and was remarkably intuitive with a relatively easy learning curve, especially when compared to Photoshop. It remains unique in that you can remove, reverse or change any step of your processing at any time in any order even in different sessions. Try doing that in any other program! And it worked in 16-bit.

I tried out LightZone shortly after it came out in 2005 and I remember liking it a lot. It took a visual approach to image manipulation, rather than a numbers- or values-based interface. And I was able to get good looking results almost immediately that were surprisingly hard to match in Photoshop. Photoshop is easier to use in cut-and-paste operations, where you area changing the image a great deal, but for just optimizing an image to look its best, LightZone was really good and fast. It was particularly good for black-and-white. It was almost like photographers designed it for other photographers to use. Imagine that!

Well, Light Crafts, Inc. went out of business in 2011 and LightZone went away, except it didn't. Fans and former employees kept the interest going and in December 2012, Light Crafts released LightZone to open source. And now a group calling itself the LightZone Project has come out with a new and free downloadable version (V4.0) for Windows and Linux, with a Mac version on its way. Actually, if you want the Windows version, hold off a bit and keep checking back since the initial release has some bugs in it that they are in the process of fixing. When they fixed things with it, they expect it to include 64-bit compatibility.

LightZone was a great program that offered features and flexibility that no other program had and now that it's free, there's no reason not to give it a try. You can download it and learn more about it here.

CamRanger now includes Android devices!

CamRanger has been successful with their device which allows you to remotely control your DSLR through your iPhone or iPad. Now they've extended that to include Android phones and tablets, and will soon add Windows 7/8 PCs to their compatibility list. There are about 30 Canon and Nikon cameras that will work with this system. The CamRanger is a device that plugs into your camera and then allows for WiFi connection to your phone or whatever, up to a 150 feet distance. You also need to download the app to your phone or device to make it work. The CamRanger device sells for $299.00. Sounds like a cool idea.

News From Around the Web

Sigma announced the price of the upcoming APS-C zoom, the 18-35mm f/1.8 HSM Art lens, and it's a bit of a surprise. It will sell for $799, which is something of a steal. I know that $800 is still $800, but considering that Canon's new 35mm f/2 IS USM lens goes for $850, the price of the Sigma zoom looks pretty good. Not much has been seen of this lens, but lens tests are starting to show up and reports are very positive. Sigma is becoming a lens company to watch, that is for sure.

Fuji will announce a new camera in its X-series, called the X-M1. It's a smaller, less expensive model, more of an entry level one, to fit in with their X-E1 and X-Pro1 cameras. This picture shows it with their new lens, a 16-50mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS. It won't have a built-in viewfinder, instead, viewing is done through the LCD screen on the back, like other P&S's.

Finally, Samsung is really upsetting the old apple cart these days! Get it? Apple cart? Phones? Oh, well. Anyway, Samsung is announcing a couple of new products that illustrate the merging of medias and technologies. First, the have the Galaxy S4 Zoom, which combines a real 10x zoom lens 16 MP OIS camera with a smartphone. So instead of a smartphone with a built-in camera, you have a camera with a built-in smartphone. We can only hope it works well as a phone when you want to make a call. Still, it would be nice to always have a decent camera with you. I'll be checking this one out.

And then Samsung takes it further, in announcing the Galaxy NX, an interchangeable lens 20.3 MP sensor mirrorless camera with a 4.8-inch touch screen that uses the Android 4.2 Jelly Bean OS and has 3G and 4G WiFi connectivity. While it isn't a smartphone, you will use it like one. Post your pictures to Instagram. And you'll be able to stream and watch movies on your camera. And surf the Web. Wow.

Photo Topics From Around the Web

There are a few things being posted around the web that are of interest and here they are:

Instagram is one of those things that people seem to either love or hate, and I fall on the side of loving it, and PetaPixel has published a list of ten Instagram users that are worth following. The list includes a National Geographic photographer and even General Electric. You can see them here. By the way, PetaPixel is a great website and one that I regularly follow.

Lately, Adobe and Photoshop have been the subject of much gnashing of teeth and rending of clothes because of their decision to only offer future versions of Photoshop as downloads as part of their Creative Cloud. No CDs to buy from here on out. Since I signed up for Creative Cloud late last year, this wasn't all that big of a deal for me, but I can see how it might upset others. So, Digital Photography Review has put out an article called, "10 Photo Editing Programs (that aren't Photoshop)." They include programs like Lightroom 4 and Photoshop Elements 11, which is something of a cheat, since they are both Adobe products, but there you go. They also showcase programs like ACDSee Pro 6 and Photo Editor, Aperture 3, and DxO Optics Pro 8, and several programs that I'm not real familiar with. There are even some free programs like GIMP that are included in the article. For several years I've been using Lightroom for RAW image processing and Photoshop for image editing and printing, and don't feel a need to shake things up, at least for now. But you can read the article here.

And finally, if you run on Mac and use Canon DSLRs, Kuuvik Digital has a new program called Kuuvik Capture for tethered shooting. It has a lot of neat features and definitely looks more usable and flexible than Canon's own Utility program for tethered shooting. The price starts at $79.99 and that price is good through June 30, 2013. You can see and order Kuuvik Capture here.

Fotodiox Debuts New LED Light

Photographic lighting has undergone several changes over the years. The first lighting was based around tungsten bulbs. Then quartz lighting proved to be more stable with less color temperature fluctuations. Then electronic strobes took over most of still photography, especially in the studio, and that seemed to solve most of the problems that photographers faced when using artificial lighting. With flash, they had short exposure times with adequate depth of field at low ISO ratings. Seemed ideal, but a funny thing happened when photography started to include movie making with digital HD-SLRs. Now flashes didn't work at all and the search was on for better lighting sources for video and filmmaking. For a while, florescent lighting was used, and still is a little, but then LED lighting was tried and that proved to be a significant innovation.

With LED lighting, you could have fairly bright lights that could compete with quartz lighting in terms of output, but LEDs were radically cooler. And by this, I mean that the lights remained cool to the touch. The main handling problems with high wattage tungsten and quartz lighting is that the light housing could heat up so much that you couldn't safely touch them after you were finished using them. You had to wait several minutes before they were cool enough to touch without burning yourself. LED lights don't heat up like this.

Until now, most LED lighting consisted of flat panels of LED bulbs arranged in a tight grid. And petty much what you saw was what you got. There were little or no light modifications you could use with them. But now, Fotodiox has changed that with the introduction of their new LED light, the LED100WA. This is an LED light based around a strobe style housing and made to be compatible with standard Bowens flash accessories, like umbrellas, softboxes, barndoors, snoots and more. The LED100WA is rated at 600 watts and is available in either 5600K (daylight) or 3200K (tungsten) color temperatures. It will sell for $324.95, and it can be purchased directly from Fotodiox.

Misc. News with Update!

UPDATE: The US designation for the new Rebel is the SL1, and another feature it has is a touch sensitive rear LCD screen. Canon is also introducing the Rebel T5i. The Rebel SL1 will sell for $649.99 for the body or $799.99 for the SL1 kit with the new EF-S 18-55mm IS STM lens. The T5i will sell for $749.99 as body only and for $899.99 in a kit. Below is an interesting size comparison between the new SL1, the Rebel T4i, and the EOS M, courtesy of Photo Rumors. As you can see, the SL1 is definitely smaller.

A couple of items have come to my attention. First up is a new camera from Canon, the EOS Kiss X7 (Kiss is the European version/designation of the American Rebel camera line), which is intended to compete against some of the Micro 4/3 cameras, in terms of size and portability. And it does seem small. Look at the diameter of the lens mount compared to the body. However, putting regular Canon lenses on it will negate much of its size advantage, compared to the rather petite M 4/3 lenses. And since Canon has their own M 4/3-like camera, the EOS M, you have to wonder about their reasoning. Well, whatever.

But the specs look good: 18 MP sensor, full HD video, pivoting LCD screen, and DIGIC5 processing chip. With the new camera is a new kit lens, the EF-S 18-55mm IS STM, which is optimized for video. And when it comes to the US, the camera will have a different name, of course. If nothing else, it should make a great back-up camera.

 

The Brown Sisters, photograph by Nicholas Nixon 

Then, Ahorn magazine has published an interview with Nicholas Nixon, a documentary photographer whose main camera is an 8x10 view camera. Even though he works with such a large, cumbersome camera, he manages to routinely get intimate people pictures with a lot of heart and presence. Nixon is a fabulous photographer, who frankly isn't as well known as he ought to be and you can read what he has to say about his art here.

The End of Analog Photography

While the subject headline for this article is somewhat inaccurate, as in I don't believe that film photography will entirely disappear anytime soon, there is a newish book called The Disappearance of Darkness: Photography at the End of the Analog Era that is an extended photo-essay dealing with the closing of Kodak manufacturing plants and other photo-related businesses around the world. This book and project was created by Canadian photographer and teacher Robert Burley. Burley, who teaches at the School of Image Arts at Ryerson University in Toronto, spent six years, starting in 2005, traveling and photographing with a large format 4x5 camera and color film. He captured the dissolution of the Kodak plant in Toronto and ended up photographing at Dwayne's Photolab in Parsons, Kansas, which was the last lab to process Kodachrome film. Steve McCurry, National Geographic photojournalist and the man who shot the famous "Afghan Girl" image, shot the last roll that they processed. When Burley started the project, he knew that he was capturing a major turning point in the evolution of photographic imaging, when the technology shifted from silver-based imaging to digital imaging. This is an important subject and I am glad Burley was there to capture it. I know that there will be a time in the not too distant future when black-and-white film-based photography will seem as quaint and old-fashioned as wet plate photography and albumin prints. The Disappearance of Darkness is a memorial to that technology. The book is now on its second printing and can be purchased through Amazon, though as of now it appears to be out of stock.