The main objective of the contest is to photograph old and new poverties in Europe. Participants are asked to report in a photo a situation of poverty or social exclusion found in the uropean Union territory.
The photos should be able to offer an original contribution, both on an artistic and European level. There are no limits as to what the subject of the photo may be, however it must represent something that calls for the EU citizens’ attention.
Theme: "Fight against the poverty and the social exclusion"
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Y'know, it seems to me much the discussion around Mike's tripod column can be summed up by a rhetorical question that's similar to the one we ask of cameras:
Which will help you make better pictures—the $50, 2 kg tripod you take with you or the $500, 10 kg tripod you leave at home?
Before going to Baja in 1991 to photograph the solar eclipse, I bought a truly massive 'pod to support my Pentax 67 and the long telephoto lens I would be using. The Bogen (now Manfrotto) 3051 with a 3047 head was reasonably priced for what it offered (in other words, not all that cheap) and it was by far the most rugged and stable tripod I've ever used in my life.
Your intrepid author, accompanied by the monster Bogen tripod, photographing the 1991 solar eclipse. That little black box hanging off the end of the lens? That's a Pentax 67 body. Gives you an idea of the size of the tripod. The mentioned-in-passing Velbon tripod is the one attached directly to the camera body. (Photo by Paula Butler.)
It also weighed at least 7 or 8 kg; it had to be 10 with the Pentax mounted on it. I only ended up using it in the field a couple of times after that; it was simply too heavy for me to lug more than a short distance. Definitely no cross-country hikes with that one. I always ended up taking a relatively flimsy Velbon that I'd had since I can't remember when.
The Bogen was a great tool for the specific task I bought it for, but as a life purchase it sucked. Its primary function was to take up space in the back of the closet and get hauled out for camera, lens, or film tests. I sold it a couple of years back.
In 2002, while planning my trip to Hawaii to photograph the "Jewels of Kilauea" project, I needed a sturdy and flexible tripod that I could take out onto the lava fields. It sure wasn't going to be that Bogen! I needed stability without weight. My ultimate happy compromise was a Gitzo G2227 carbon fiber tripod with a Manfrotto 329RC4 head. That set me back more dinero than I can recall. $600? $800? Whatever, lots, but it was definitely the right tool for the job. I had no trouble carrying it for kilometers across uneven terrain. I still have it and use it. There's a good chance it's the tripod I'll have for the rest of my life.
But still, I don't carry it around routinely. It's a little bulky for that. So I've continued to move down the scale and found two tripods that work fabulously well for my current photographic "lifestyle" and cost me nearly nothing.
The first one I just plain stumbled across. I was going off on a road trip with a friend a few years back, and she needed to stop off at Ritz Cameras on the way to drop off some film for developing. Looking around the place, I realized that an inexpensive, lightweight tripod could be a real boon on the trip. I ended up buying a Quantaray QSX-6601TM on sale for $29.99. It's remarkably capable for what it is, having center leg braces, a quick release plate, and a removable and reversible monopod column. It's small enough with the column removed that it will fit in carry-on luggage, and it only weighs 1.5 kg.
Won't work worth a damn with a Pentax 67 (surprise!) or probably even a full-sized digital SLR. For cameras like my recent Fujifilm S100 and 6500 it proved entirely adequate. It's definitely a nice match for the positively petite Olympus Pen EP-1, even when I mount the 45–200mm zoom.
Is it going to be good in a strong wind? No. Is it going to last me the rest of my life? Given the almost-entirely plastic construction, I very much doubt it. But, when it finally dies, I'm out only $30. I've gotten a huge amount of use from it over the past 2 1/2 years; it's probably the smartest impulse purchase I ever made. It's almost all I've been using for field photography since I started making digital photographs.
Bottom of the bag Almost. Some years earlier, I'd picked up (again at Ritz Camera) a Vanguard Mini Tabletop Tripod (similar to this one
) for the whopping sum of $12.94. It also weighs a whopping 350g and folds up into a 20 x 8 x 5 cm package. Consequently, it has permanent residence in the bottom of my shoulder bag next to the Olympus. I don't even notice the tripod is there...except when I need it.
A self portrait by my Olympus Pen camera, showing the Vanguard Mini tripod. It's compact, it's cute, it's cheap, it's practical.
That isn't often, but it's sure nice to have it when it is. When I went up to the top of the Empire State building at night on my recent trip to New York City that's the tripod that went with me, because The Powers That Be don't much care for tripods on the observation deck. Nobody complains about a little gadget that's barely bigger than the small camera that's mounted on it. Setting it on floors, putting it on ledges, propping it against walls, I managed to get all the photographs I wanted with all my focal length lenses. Okay, it was a little dicey out at the 200mm end of things; this is not exactly the most stable camera platform. But it worked well enough that about half of my maximum telephoto photographs came out. Without that little 'pod, the percentage would have been precisely zero.
From the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State building, looking up. Photographed with the Olympus Pen and the Vanguard Mini tripod.
Yup, that's the tripod I have with me...it's helped me make me more good pictures than the Bogen ever did.
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More... Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Posted on 24th June 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
Hitachi has announced a competition for photographers, musicians & filmmakers in the UK, France or Germany, with a chance to win €5,000 cash prize. As a promotion for G-Technology storage device brand, participants can submit one of their creative projects from 2009 or 2010 in any of the three categories with a chance to win either the cash prize or the company's 4TB G-Raid dual-drive dependable storage system. In addition, all winning entries will be exhibited at the Brick Lane Gallery in London. The competition runs until September 30 2010.
Posted on 24th June 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
Just posted! Our lens review featuring Olympus's Micro Four Thirds superzoom, the M Zuiko Digital 14-150mm F4-5.6. This latest addition to the company's Pen range continues with its downsizing theme, and is dramatically smaller and lighter than most similar SLR lenses. It also promises fast and silent focusing optimized for video shooting. So is this mini-marvel the ultimate general-purpose travel zoom?
The Second Edition of Digital Restoration from Start to Finish: How to repair old and damaged photographs by Ctein has recently been published. (As we sometimes remember to mention, the name is pronounced "kuh-TINE" and it's his whole legal name.) Changes since the first edition are that the chapter on software has been completely rewritten; the examples are all new; a new chapter called "Beautification," about how to make pictures look better, has been added; there's a new section to help aid in diagnosing problems; and there's now better separation between the main text and the more than 80 How-To's. Changes throughout the text reflect refinements in presentation and methods and account for the use of more powerful computers and non-destructive editing.
The book is published by Focal Press, meaning that the editing and presentation are first rate.
The chapters are:
The Big Picture
Hardware for Restoration Work
Software for Restoration
Getting the Photo Into the Computer
Restoring Tone
Restoring Color
Making Masks
Damage Control
Tips, Tricks, and Enhancements
Beautification
Examples
Printing Tips
Archiving and Permanence
You can order a signed copy of Digital Restoration from Start to Finishthrough Ctein's website, or, if it's more convenient for you, you can order it through Amazon U.S.
or Amazon U.K.
There's also a PDF of the introduction and sections of several chapters available for download at the first link.
Finally, if you want to save some money, Ctein will be having a sale on the book at a later date, which we'll alert you to when the time comes.
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More... Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Scott Dommin: "I have the first edition of the book, which Ctein was kind enough to sign for me. It's the best book on the subject, bar none. The second edition should be even better. Even if you're not currently restoring a photo, you can flip through the book and be amazed at what is possible these days."
Featured Comment by Bahi: "I haven't yet read the book (shameful admission…I'm going to put that right shortly) but do have an idea of how good it might be, assuming that the author doesn't hold his cards too close to his chest.
"I recently asked Ctein to restore some very old photographs for a client and just had a chance to look at some of the incomplete work in progress. It may be unfinished but it's already beginning to look eye-poppingly good—there's genuine highlight detail in some of these pictures that we simply couldn't see in the originals. I'm not able to rule out the possibility that time travel was involved in obtaining the highlight detail (consider: long beard, interest in spacecraft, physics degree, clever fella, endless supply of dye transfer paper which Kodak stopped making sixteen years ago, etc.) but either way, we're talking about a book written by something of a wizard."
Posted on 24th June 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
The SD Association has introduced symbols to denote the latest high-speed SDXC and SDHC cards and to help consumers identify ideal cards for their devices. A UHS-I specification indicates a card has an interface capable of transferring data at up to 104 MB/s, four times faster than the current limit of 25 MB/s. UHS-I cards will be compatible with existing devices but can only make use of their extra speed capabilities when used with a UHS-I reader or cameras. An additional 'Class 1' symbol on these cards promises real time recording of HD videos. This symbol differs from the Class 2, 4, 6 and 10 logos used for non-UHS-I cards that defined minimum write speed.
Submit a photo of your place in Illinois (the photo must still be recognizable as Illinois). The place featured in the photo must be public and open to all ages.
Prize:
Two Night Stay at Pheasant Run Resort
Deluxe Overnight Accommodations for Two Nights
Dinner for four at our Garden Atrium Chef’s Table
Two Theater Tickets to the Noble Fool Theatricals at Pheasant Run Resort
Full Access to Resort Amenities: 3 Pools, Fitness Center, Shopping, Kids Klub & More
If you like this web site about photo contests, please help us spread the word about it! We greatly appreciate if you add a link to www.photocompete.com in your blog or MySpace. Thanks!
I'm sorry to report that Joe Deal, of Providence, Rhode Island, who we last talked about here, died of his illness last friday. Joe's pictures are elegant, analytical, accurate, and austere, with elements of abstraction, usually showing the raw encroachment of new development on landscape that still shows its natural contours and textures. There is an obituary at the St. Louis website stltoday.com (he was the Dean of the Art School at Washington University there during the '90s), and you can read a little about his post-New-Topographics work The Fault Zone at Robert Mann.
Sincere condolences to his wife, daughter, and father, as well as to his many students and friends.
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More... Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
I'm pleased to announce that after eight weeks of very hard work, Carl Weese has now shipped all of the platinum/palladium print orders—roughly 240 Pt/Pd prints and 90 digital prints in 183 packages. Many of you who ordered will have received your prints by now, and the few who haven't yet will soon. There were inevitably just a few glitches in the orders or payments—and still a slight possibility of lost shipments, although there haven't been any yet—so if you're expecting prints and are still without them at the end of the next week or ten days, please contact Carl. You can also send an email to me and I'll forward it to him.
Carl will be incommunicado for a few days while he takes a well-deserved break. Again, my sincerely thanks to Carl, his wife Tina, and to all of you who purchased prints—I hope you like them!
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More... Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Markus Spring: "I received my print last week and got excited to a degree I really had not expected—the combination of finest details, warm inviting tonality and a wonderful structure of the paper was overwhelming. My thanks go not only to Carl, but also to T.O.P. for preparing the venue for that print offer."
I live at the northernmost reaches of tornado alley, the vast expanse of the American Midwest that is plagued with tornadoes every Spring and summer. The most famous of them is probably the Kansas twister that carried Dorothy to Oz, but there are hundreds of them every year and they're not all so imaginative. For the past two nights we've had tremendous thunderstorms here, a few of which spawned tornadoes.
Tornado frequency. There are no accepted boundaries for "Tornado Alley," roughly the large orange and red area at the left. If you map tornado deaths, the epicenter moves considerably eastward, since those areas have more population. My location is roughly at the green dot. Map courtesy Oklahoma Climatological Survey.
When the big storm cells came through on Monday, the kids were planning on going bowling. I kept them at the house, which turned out to be a good idea—three tornadoes touched down locally. The largest, in the Village of Eagle just west of where we are (my son went to YMCA day camp in Eagle when he was younger), damaged more than 100 homes and completely destroyed at least six. Where we are, the warning sirens were wailing above the roar of the wind and the sky was flickering with
lightning. The crackling nearby lightning hits were tremendous, like sonic booms. The
rain came down in a fury—an inch and a half in an hour or so. The
county is still under a State of Emergency.
The Chief of the Eagle Fire Department, Justin Heim, age 27, was at the Fire Station trying to start the town's warning siren manually (it's been on the fritz for some time) when the tornado struck his own home—with his wife and two young daughters inside. The house was completely obliterated down to ground level. The Chief himself, as you might imagine, was among the responders to that call. "It's gone," he said. "There's nothing there. It's like
someone took the house and it's gone." Fortunately, he'd left his loved ones in a protected area of the basement (another reason we have basements here!) before he left the house, so they were safe. A local resident allowed as how Chief Heim might have been allowed a little time to recover after he got his family settled into a nearby hotel, but he stayed on the job—and probably hasn't had a lot of sleep since. Makes sense—he's Eagle's only full-time fireman.
Everybody's playing innocent so far when asked about the non-functioning sirens, but local news quickly
uncovered evidence of multiple failed inspections going back months. Fortunately, despite their absence, folks made it to their basements and no one out in Eagle was killed or seriously injured.
Meanwhile, back at the ranch house, my basement's full of puddles, so no more work on the darkroom for a while.
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More... Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Ken Tanaka: "Glad to read that you're fine, Mike. This sure has been a week of turbulent early summer weather up here in the upper Midwestern U.S. Here in Chicago last Friday this monster rolled over Chicago near rush hour. (I was doing some unrelated photo work at the time and had a camera handy to grab this ominous scene.)
It blew-out quite a few windows in the Sears (a.k.a. Willis) Tower and several other buildings. Fun fun."
Featured Comment by Alexandre Buisse: "For a second, I had a vision of your basement full of poodles. That would definitely have been an issue for a darkroom...."
Mike replies:To say nothing of the issue it would be for my terrier. The level of excitement doesn't even bear thinking about.
Having been part of the photographic community for many years and having participated extensively in many online forums both international and local to South Africa I have come to see so much passing-off of other people’s work with absolutely no credit given to the original author of the work concerned. In the South African Photographic Community this problem seems to be growing at an ever-alarming rate and seems somewhere along the line to have become considered acceptable behaviour when clearly it is not, a case of “oh well, everybody’s doing it therefore so can I”.
I cannot understand why photographers struggle so much with the concept of giving credit to someone else’s hard work or unique ideas. It seems they would much rather take someone else’s work, reword, rework or rehash it slightly and then hop onto photography forums and communities and pass the work off as their own. Why is it so difficult to point people in the direction of where the original information came from??
It seems in their inevitable attempts at gaining recognition in the photography community, a fair and growing percentage of photographers will apparently stop at nothing to make themselves look good.
I’ve seen photographers take other people’s tutorials, rewrite them just enough so they are not easily linked to the original creator and then either give this information away freely as their “own” or even worse sell it or use it in training courses again passed-off as their “own” work.
I’ve similarly seen people take photoshop actions from the creator’s web site, tamper with them inside photoshop to remove any reference to the original author, replace all that information with their own and then rename the actions slightly and then pass this around freely or for money in the hopes of gaining recognition as the “brilliant” author of the work. It’s utterly hideous behaviour and quite honestly it leaves a really bitter taste in one’s mouth and does not bode well for the photographic world. Most people are totally unaware that they have been duped into believing that X created the work and X just happily continues doing this without any feeling of regret to stealing someone else’s hard work. In fact it seems those lifting information actually start believing it’s their own work, as they say “tell a lie long enough and even you believe it”.
But …. lo and behold … should someone copy something that X created, X will be jumping up and down, screaming and making a big fuss about someone stealing their work ? huh ? Are these people frikken serious ? It’s okay for them to steal and rework someone else’s work but if someone else does the same to them suddenly it’s not okay? I think it’s a classic case of “what goes around, comes around”, the injustices that you may inflict on someone else today will come back to you tenfold but suddenly then it’s not so nice is it?
In South Africa, copyright laws are very sketchy when it comes to photography and there are so many violations of other people’s copyrights that I don’t think the law would know where to start, so it’s up to each photographer to protect his own work. With the onset of the digital age, people have access to information worldwide and it’s become even easier to sit in another country and pass off some international person’s work as your own and never be caught out about it either. Sadly I see very little action being taken by the local community amd the problem is just growing.
If you write a tutorial that has been created from several other people’s work or lifted from several web sites then the onus is upon you to list all those references at the end of your article and NOT try and make people believe the work belongs to you. When last did you pick up a book that did not clearly give references to the sources of information? Authors of books for the most part seem to know and respect copyright laws but the same (sadly) cannot be said for the photographic world. It really is NOT difficult to give credit where credit is due, try it, you might just get a warm fuzzy feeling inside when you do this and it’s the right thing to do.
Posted on 23rd June 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
SanDisk has announced it is shipping its 1 GB Write Once Read Many (WORM) SD memory cards in volume to the Japanese police force. Introduced in 2008 in 128MB capacity, files recorded onto the WORM cards can be stored up to 100 years, and cannot be altered or deleted. The card is aimed at industries where unaltered content is vital such as police investigations, court testimony, electronic voting etc. The SD WORM card is available worldwide, with 'pricing dependent upon the quantity ordered.'
This post is dangerous, because I'm jumping the gun a bit and I don't want people to take away the wrong message from this. Remember Johnston's Forum Constraint: "You cannot say anything clearly enough on a camera forum that it cannot be misconstrued." Here's my attempt at clarity:
N.b. (as you probably know, "n.b." means nota bene, Latin for "note well"): I am not recommending this. I might do so in the future, but not yet. So please do not take this post as a recommendation! Yet.
Safelights are a big headache in darkroom work. There really isn't any such thing as a perfect safelight solution, at least not with traditional technology. Many safelights (and texts analyzing and explaining them) were good for older graded papers but don't hold for "newer" VC papers; glass filters are pretty safe in most applications, but they can be dim (most darkrooms that use them have several, located strategically), and they do deteriorate over time; sodium vapor safelights still have their proponents but have tested very poorly for me (and Paul Butzi and, I believe, John Sexton too); and several types of LED-based safelights, which were too expensive to sell in large numbers even when there was a much larger market for darkroom products, have gone out of production.
Anyway, a tastiferous* box arrived via the brown truck today. Inside were two cool Chinese-made LED bulbs from a company called OptiLED: a 2.5-watt Festival Festoon Decolamp, in amber (top), and a .5-watt Festival S11 Decolamp, also in amber (right). They're not actually safelights: they're made for things like Las Vegas signage and to encrust Merry-Go-Rounds. The little one appears to be too dim to be of much use for our nonstandard purposes, but the larger one is promising. The graph of its output, which I saw during my far-flung 'net research but can't seem to find again, is a sharp-cutting spike at 590 nm. (Wish I could find that graph again...).
So is it really sharp-cutting? Here's the thing about safelights: you have to test. Really, the "safe" in safelight is a misnomer: all safelights are unsafe for certain levels of illumination combined with certain durations of exposure. The trick is accurately finding out where those limits are...for your materials in your space given your working methods. In due course (i.e., once I'm set up to test this one), I'll write a post on testing safelights. The takeaway here should be that it's got to be done. A must. Baseline B&W darkroom craftsmanship. Ctein, for example, guesses this Festoon should be safe. Paul guesses it won't be. (If it isn't, I ain't dead in the water: there's also a red one, with output centered at 627 nm.) The point is, I can't take their guesses for gospel, and you can't take mine. We all gotta test our own.
Ponce de Leon Even though I don't know whether it works yet, the OptiLED has a lot of allure. It's so wetproof it can be used outdoors; it will operate at any temperature from —30 to 70 degrees C (that's –22 to 158 degrees F), which pretty much encompasses all the temperatures I expect to encounter in my basement; it's made of fire-resistant polymers; it draws only 2.5 watts from the wall; and it's rated to last for 35,000 hours of use, which is more time than even I have spent in darkrooms in my entire life so far. And it's so nice in the darkroom space in the basement that I could really get by quite comfortably with only one.
Of course, allure can mislead. Ponce de Leon considered the Fountain of Youth so alluring that he wasted a large stretch of his limited lifespan looking for it, and we all know how that turned out. Just because something is appealing doesn't mean it isn't also too good to be true. So we test. More anon.
Note: Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. More... Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.
Featured Comment by Mark Roberts: "I don't care if it works or not—anything called 'Festoon' is a must-have for my darkroom!"
Mike replies:I agree, the name is a big plus. <g>
Featured Comment by Kerstin: "I'm so far out of it that the last safelight I had I made myself. It was a small light bulb (about the size of the LED, I think), and I painted it red with nail polish."
Featured Comment by bongo: "Looks great. Thanks for the recommendation."
Posted on 22nd June 2010 by News: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com) in Syndicated Press
Toshiba has announced the development of its first wireless SDHC memory card in conjunction with Singapore based Trek 2000. In addition, the two companies will invite digital camera makers and other interested parties to join an industry forum to promote and share the technology with the aim of creating a standard for WiFi cards. The WiFi enabled 8GB SDHC card will feature 802.11 wireless transfer rates and support RAW file transfer. The cards will have to compete with Eye-Fi cards, first launched in 2007, that have seen increasing in-camera support from camera makers.
The main objective of the contest is to photograph old and new poverties in Europe. Participants are asked to report in a photo a situation of poverty or social exclusion found in the uropean Union territory.
) for the whopping sum of $12.94. It also weighs a whopping 350g and folds up into a 20 x 8 x 5 cm package. Consequently, it has permanent residence in the bottom of my shoulder bag next to the Olympus. I don't even notice the tripod is there...except when I need it.
or 
There's also a PDF of the introduction and sections of several chapters available for download at the first link.
Summer is finally here and Photostockplus is looking for the best ‘Summer Fun’ shot!