2022 Photo Ops ~ Update Two

2022 isle de France Photo-opportunities - still very heavily weighted toward things I enjoy.  There are plenty of other opportunities here and around Europe.  Though I must say, the number of tourists arriving is nearly back to it's pre-pandemic crushing levels.

[I'm redoing this sequence and putting the completed events in reverse order putting the most recently finished events at the top.]

Tour Auto - 25-30 April *Did not attend*

la traversee de Paris - 27 March *CANCELLED at the last moment! Argghhhh*  but it was rescheduled - yea!!!

la traversee de Paris - 17 April *DONE* Photos Here!

Foire Photo - Chelles - 20 March *Did not attend* 

 

Retromobile - 16-20 March *DONE*  Photos here!

Salon International de l'Agriculture *DONE*  Photos here!

------------------- next up ---------------

Vintage Revival Montlhery - 7-8 May - the Beast will be there (the only surviving Fiat S76) *DONE* photos soon

Rallye des Princesses - 14-19 May *DONE* photos soon

Paris - Rambouillet avec les Teuf-Teuf - 28 rassemblement a Paris 7eme, 29 May a Rambouillet

Cafe Racer Montlhery - 18-19 June

le Mans Classic - 30 June - 3 July

A day in the life of a F1 photographer

Update 2 June, 2022 -

It appears that Sony knows the power of merging imaging, processing, and sharing.  The CEO is claiming that in two years we should see equivalent performace between stand-alone and cell-phones.  

I just looked at images I took at the Vintage Revival Montlhery 2022 event.  Comparing my Sony APS-C images to Motorola G8 Power I can see an enormous difference in quality.  The Moto images look synthetic and "water colory."  This reminds me of the early days of stand alone Point and Shoot small sensor'd camera output.  There's no comparison, really.  The Moto images are still a very long way behind the Sony NEX output.

However, if the IQ gap can be closed, really, honestly closed as Sony's CEO suggests, things could get really interesting, right? 

Update 27 May, 2022:

Having come from a time when there was an entire "eco-system" needed to make, process, and distribute a single image, the fact we can now do it all on our own is worth noting, no matter how much "gear" we need to do it all ourselves.  

Imagine how many people are no longer required to make it all work.  Film manufacturers.  Chemical engineers.  Print paper manufacturers. Materials procurement. Lab technicians.  Secretaries to manage/facilite communications.  Distributors.  Truck drivers to receive/deliver all these materials.  Plus all the overhead needed to keep the wheels on the track - first level, mid-level, upper level mangers. 

It's really quite remarkable, isn't it?  Maybe it's only remarkable to us old folk who "remember how it once was."  The whole system optimization is stunning, no matter one's perspective. 

 

Original Post - 

Some years back I had a lot to say with my friends about "wouldn't it be nice to have a Linux/Android OS-based camera where you could do everything on one device from image capture, through image processing, and then to image sharing?"

Canon and Nikon are not really "electronics" companies.  They don't have the expertise to pull off such a move.  But Sony does.  Yet Sony cameras remain pretty much standalone devices.  Perhaps they don't yet see the demand?

The cameras that offered Android "connectivity" back then were terribly slow on startup and slow in use.  These products understandably never really caught on.  

Yet, I still feel there is a strong place for such devices where the image capture is much better and much more flexible than current mobile phone tech.  The original problem of slowness had nothing to do with the Android OS and everything to do with the severely under-powered hardware it ran on.

Yes, everyone has WiFi, NFC, Bluetooth connectivity.  As you'll see in the following video this only leads to the need for more equipment.  It seems like the poor fellow is managing his technologies as much or perhaps more than he is making actual images.  Just look at the pile of computer "stuff" he needs to get his job done.  Quel bordel!

Moving the image capture device itself to a standardized Operating System would enable image processing, management, and distribution applications from a single, common location.  In short, everything could be done in camera, as it will have simply become a centralized compute device that happens to specialize in image capture.

Think of it this way - Say you're a working Formula One photographer and you're trackside shooting a few images.  What if you could snap a sequence of photos, select the one(s) you want,  pass it(them) through a color grader, and then post it with your comments to a website all in moment or two?

It could be an interesting solution, right?

Here is a hybrid solution that I use when wanting to avoid carrying the big laptop.  With my old Sony NEX and Ax000 cameras I WiFi or NFC connect to  a large screen mobile phone, select desired images, transfer them to the phone in just a few gestures, open them in something like Snapseed, process them, and send the results on.  This is a nearly manageable solution. 

In any event, have a look at all the support gear this guy uses. 

Shutter Speed: Trackside With F1 Photographers

I've written far too much about lenses and their various properties.  

 

Just last night my father sent me a couple videos about photographers and photography during Formula One automobile racing events.  These videos show how much more to photography there is than cameras and lenses.

Listen carefully to what Vladimr Rys has to say about working, the years to took to get close, and how he likes to work "cinema-graphically".

Komura Telemore 95 2x teleconverter ~ a quick look

Living where I do, I absolutely know much how fortunate I am to live in peace.  There is mental space and physical safety to do the things I want, like write these little amount to nothing important blog entries.  

Not everyone has this option these days.  We receive daily reminders of this fact and it's downright heartbreaking.  People are being killed for a man's out-sized sense of power, control, and entitlement.  I wish peace for everyone.

Here is what Peter Turnley has been doing in the Ukraine.  And here are some of his photos.

-------------------------

From time to time a person can find cheap, old, third party teleconverters that date from the age of manual focus lenses.  Vivitar, Soligor, Komura and many brands were sold as a way to double the focal length of a lens.

While in concept this might seem interesting and useful under the right circumstances, the old 3rd party converters had a bad reputation, even back in the day.

When I recently received a lens there was a Komura 2x Telemore 95 converter in the box, too.

I can't find anything about the first version of this converter.  Version II is reputed to be a 7 element device of fairly decent quality.  But since I know nothing about version I, I thought I'd try it out with a Nikon Nikkor-P f/2.5 105mm pre-Ai Xenotar-type lens.

 Setup - 

• Sony A7 - ISO100, 2 second timer, in-camera levels used to square the whole plot up
• Manfrotto tripod - it's capable of securing an 8x10inch view camera, so it's sturdy enough for this
  
• Lenses -
• Nikon Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 pre-Ai Xenotar-type
  
• Komura Telemore 95 2x teleconverter
  
• Rawtherapee "Auto Match"
  

Comparison - 

Here is the scene setup.  It's just a pair of closed gaze scrims in our apartment.  The details are interestingly small, so therefore useful for this kind of "wee look-see." 

 

 

[As always, click on the image and look at it to 100percent file size to see whatever there is to be seen.]

 

 

Comments -

The Nikon Nikkor-P 105mm f/2.5 pre-Ai Xenotar-type lens is beautiful from wide open.  It shows a slight softness at f/2.5 and becomes very sharp at f/4.

From years of looking at Nikon lenses by the hundreds, I swear they designed their lenses this way.  Just a touch of softness wide open and very sharp one click down all the way through to the smallest aperture.  

If I were a betting man, I'd wager dollars to doughnuts that Nikon understands the Japanese market better than anyone.  Wide open with under-corrected spherical aberration behind the point of focus gives a gloriously subtle, smooth effect that, apparently, Japanese photographers love.  With a few exceptions, the Nikon lenses I've looked at exhibit this kind of performance.

Adding the Komura Telemore 95 to the mix and we see that the corners suffer terribly until f/8.  The center looks somewhat acceptable from wide open, but those edges are horrible.  

 No wonder these have a bad reputation.

Nikon Nikkor-S Auto 50mm f/1.4 (single coated) vs AiS (multi-coated)

Living where I do, I absolutely know much how fortunate I am to live in peace.  There is mental space and physical safety to do the things I want, like write these little amount to nothing important blog entries.  

Not everyone has this option these days.  We receive daily reminders of this fact and it's downright heartbreaking.  People are being killed for a man's out-sized sense of power, control, and entitlement.  I wish peace for everyone.

Here is what Peter Turnley has been doing in the Ukraine.  And here are some of his photos.

-------------------------

In a prior post I compared the highlight color shift of a AiS version to a multi-coated Nikon Nikkor-S.C Auto 50mm f/1.4.  It appears the designs are different between the early S Auto and more recent AiS.  The color shift I saw was in the newer optic.

There's a small problem with the S.C Auto I have as the focusing ring is very very stiff.  So I bought a single-coated version for very little money in the hope that the focusing ring would turn correctly.  

The little lens arrived and the condition is better than I ever imagined.  The glass in this c.1972 optic is pristine.  The focusing ring turns smoothly and correctly.  The aperture blades are dry and "snappy."

With the S.C Auto out of action until I can drill out two retaining screws I  compare here the Nikkor-S Auto against the AiS version.

 

Setup - 

• Sony A7 - ISO100, 2 second timer, in-camera levels used to square the whole plot up
• Manfrotto tripod - it's capable of securing an 8x10inch view camera, so it's sturdy enough for this
  
• Lenses -
• Nikon Nikkor-S (single-coated) Auto 50mm f/1.4 pre-Ai c.1972
  
• Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AiS c.1984
  
• Rawtherapee "Auto Match"
  

Comparison - 

Here is the scene setup.  It's just a pair of closed gaze scrims in our apartment.  The details are interestingly small, so therefore useful for this kind of "wee look-see." 

 

 

[As always, click on the image and look at it to 100percent file size to see whatever there is to be seen.]

 

 

Comments - 

Note: Please keep in mind I'm comparing single examples of lenses.  It's not like I have a deep repository of samples and examples of all these optics.  What I see in the lenses in my possession might not be seen in other people's copies.  And, as with my Lens Turbo II studies, not all effects are attributable to the primary optic.

The Nikon Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 AiS still shows a strong purple cast in the curtain from the extremely bright highlights at f/1.4.  At f/2 this strong purple cast appears to be much better controlled.

The Nikon Nikkor-S 50mm f/1.4 Auto, on the other hand, shows well controlled color shifts in the highlight to shadow transition areas.  It looks as good to me as the multi-coated Nikkor-S.C Auto.  When pixel-peeping at 100percent file size the overall image is a little softer to my eyes than the AiS version.  Though I don't show it here, the AiS sharpness advantage over the Nikkor-S Auto is gone by f/2.8.

Something I noticed recently is how similarly the AiS f/1.4 and f/1.8 Nikkors render.  Both show this strong purple cast in the bleed from highlight regions when shot wide open.  

 

 

If you look at the specific implementations of the plasmat design, both AiS lenses have elements 2 and 3 air-space separated.  The earlier/older Nikkor-S and S.C Auto design, on the other hand, have elements 2 and 3 cemented as a doublet.  I wonder what design trade-offs were made between them?  Did Nikon trade a bit of chromatic aberration off against improved resolution at f/1.4?

I also include a Rawtherapee "Capture Sharpen" comparison.  The softer Nikkor-S Auto looks really good and the AiS looks nearly "wickedly" sharp after a little "Capture Sharpen."  If you don't like the Nikkor-S softness wide open, here's a fix, though I would be careful.  I'm now leaning in the direction that "Capture Sharpen" might have an effect on the overall rendition of a lens by correcting some of the more interesting faults that give an optic their various signature characters.

It would be fair to ask why I'm going through all this trouble to try and understand what's going on.  One answer would be that I'm chasing pixies.  Another answer is a little more complex.

I really enjoy photographing vehicles.  In direct sunlight and indoors where pin-point light sources are often used, automobiles and motorcycles can have very strong specular highlights off of shiny surfaces and edges.  Of course I would like to avoid having to use chromatic aberration corrections in software if I can during processing.  So if I could select a "good" lens to begin with I will avoid having to take additional processing steps later.

 

 

Having chased my tail in circles around (currently) inexpensive, widely available lenses I've come to consider the idea that it might be interesting to shoot just one lens on one camera for awhile to see what happens.  

It won't happen, of course.  My other lenses would revolt for the lack of attention.  Besides, others have done a lot of this OL/OC/OY kind of thing.  

However, I will be using this old single coated lens for as long as it takes to see what it can do.  Someone who wrote about Leica lenses many years ago suggested it takes about a year of use before a person really knows if a lens is "good" and will stay in the kit or not.

Getting Old ~ the present state of things

Kirk Tuck writes about how difficult it is to keep "engaged" in blogging as the world around us changes.

I can see his point. If you're young and "connected" to the world through a mobile phone, you likely don't care nor even know about image quality, A to D bit depth, lenses and lens design, cameras, and all the things us old guys spent years trying to understand and master.  

 

 

No.  Likely all you need to do is point a phone at something, snap a comparatively low-rez photo, share it on social media (maybe passing it through a filter to make things "interesting"), and be on your way.  As I continue to age, perhaps the ranks of "cell phone photographers" will grow by a minuscule 1?  It's a little early to tell (though not by much).

It used to be that controlling the photographic process took years of learning, practice, and refinement.

I paid my way through the University of California (twice) by, in part, working as a photographer's assistant (weddings) and in B&W photo print labs (Irvine, and Hollyweird).  I picked up a lot of tribal knowledge, which included posing people, subject composition, processing chemistry, film of a wide variety, print papers from the world over, enlarging using all manner of enlargers and lenses, framing, and showing of finished works.  

Things could get extremely "tweeky" and esoteric.  Tri-X shot at ASA200 and souped in D76 (perhaps one of the greatest film/developer combinations ever, after the much more recent TMax100 souped also in D76), printed to extremely large sizes with even, in-focus grain edge to edge?  No problem.  Stand or semi-stand film development in Rodinal 200:1 to "fully process" the shadow areas for Palladium contact printing?  No problem.  Masking slide film to cut and paste, add or subtract images, and to control contrast or add colors?  No problem.

 

 

This is where I've gotten stuck.  I've narrowed things down a bit.  Now I enjoy older optics.  This is because I can't have a darkroom where I live and the old chemical film processes are beyond my reach.  But lenses?  If I pay close attention I can find brilliant things for attractively small prices.

I have several boxes filled with old lenses. I often use them.  They're very satisfying to me.  This mania stems from a time when I couldn't afford these jewels.  

It's kind of like never being able to afford a Selmer Mark VI alto saxophone and having to settle for a Conn or lesser Selmer model, or trying to scrape together enough money for a chopped Model A bodied flathead V8 hotrod, and later in life finding you have just enough resources to pull it off so you indulge yourself, in spite of the music and automotive worlds converting to electric.

Deeply and profoundly I know these skills and this knowledge are no longer useful nor very much appreciated.  Self awareness can be brutal.  Yet I continue to pamper myself in cheap old photographic glass. To make matters worse, I get bored and when that happens I tend to buy things, like lenses.  Particularly when there are fewer photo-opportunities. 

I've spent years writing about this stuff and sharing the little unimportant things that I've found.  That's it, actually, in a simple statement: These things are unimportant and increasingly so as time passes.

This is why, like many other old guys, I toy with the idea of just letting the blog sit in place, but to personally move on to other things.  What other things?  I have no idea.  Maybe I'll continue to post things until something different occurs to me.

Images with "impact" ~ do we care about which camera and which lens?

For this post I'm going to flip my normal "let's have a look at MORE equipment" approach to things on its head.  I'd like to talk a brief moment about the "impact" an image can have.

I recently visited an extensive retrospective of Steve McCurry's work.  The event was held at the Musee Maillot.  From the very start it seemed as if every image had a certain visual "impact."

It didn't matter what lens took which image.  Everything looked drop-dead gorgeous.

Yes, of course I'd read, like everyone else interested in this, where M.McCurry had used a Nikon Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 lens for some of his early portrait work.  Yes, of course I'd read, like everyone else interested in this, that M.McCurry travels light these days with a Nikon D-somethingorother and a 24-70mm f/2.8 and maybe a slightly longer zoom, too.

None of that mattered.  Everything looked, as I said two paragraphs ago, glorious.

OK.  If I had to pick a nit, I'd have to say the color saturation of his Kodachrome images is superior to his current digital imaging.  I've read where he deliberately under-exposed the slide film by 1/3rd to a 1/2 a stop to get that effect.  And when matched with the out of focus rendition of those old Nikkor lenses... oh... my...

The images in the show were printed quite large, too.

A person could walk right up and inspect the work carefully.  I did that and found the experience educational.  I could see where the out of focus transition zones were rendered with just a touch of what I'll call "delicacy."  Or perhaps I should say "deliciousness."

Then I would step back and take in the experience of the entire image.  I could consider the subject, the setting, the social circumstances under which his images were made, and the cultural "impact" his work has had.  I hadn't been this impressed by a body of work in many years.

When I lived and worked as a black and white print technician on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, California I used to experience photo-shows in a similar way.  In this way I remember two shows, in particular, that impressed me in opposite directions.

The first was a Helmut Newton show on Santa Monica Blvd.  I was prepared to be impressed and to stand in awe.  Afterall, Helmut was very well known, but... the large prints were soft starting a 1/3rd of the way out from the center.  Every single one of them suffered this.  It was as if the show had been hastily thrown together and the organizers didn't care about the outcome.

Whomever printed them did NOT let the temperature of the negatives normalize to flatten out the material.  The center of the negatives were distorted by the temperature differential and the 120 format film grain, which should have been even and sharp all the way to the edge of the frame, wasn't.  The show was a huge disappointment to me.

An Ansel Adams show, at a different time but in the very same gallery on Santa Monica Blvd, did however impress me.  I could walk up to a print and inspect it closely and appreciate the detail and print technique.  Then I could step back and take in the entire image to try to appreciate on a different level what M.Adams had done.

I've since changed my mind about how I feel about St. Ansel's work, but at the time he was universally considered to be one of photography's greatest practitioners and contributors to the advancement of the craft.  I realize this is very West Coast photography-centric.  My friends and I had no idea what was happening in Europe at the time.

I still feel Ansel Adams was able to control his materials very well.  Lenses.  Cameras.  Process.  Print making.  Image interpretation.  The whole process had come under his control.

Certainly Steve McCurry's work is very different from Ansel Adams'.  It's M.McCurry's use of deeply saturated color combined with very compelling subject matter that impresses me so.  And it's clear to me he knows how to control his materials to get the most out of them, just like M.Adams did in a generation before.

Knowing the materials he used might deepen my appreciation of his work from a technique perspective, but even if I didn't know these things, it was very clear to me that I was standing before the works of a master.  

Rarely do I see us humans reflected in image in such a profoundly moving way.