GIANNI GALASSI PhotoGraphia

INTO THE NIGHT (BOUNDARIES 7)

In the seventh installment of the PhotoGraphia Boundaries series, I'd like to introduce the work of Kevin Cooley. The Brooklyn based photographer pushes his vision into the night, extracting from the apparent dullness of the darker hours a wealth of luminous poetry. His Nachtflug and Light’s Edge portfolios are sheer bliss. Enjoy.

MORE RATIONALISM

 

ZOOM GALORE

Blogger and PhotoGraphia friend Gilles Champagne shows appreciation for my post on prime lenses and is considering a new lens for his GF1. I'd like to share my advice with everybody.

I think the Panasonic 14-140 won’t disappoint you. As I said, it outperforms the Nikon 18-200 DX, yet with a smaller size and weight. Though being plastic, it’s a well built lens. Bayonet is metal.

The most visible flaw is vignetting, especially at longer focals. It’s more obvious if you shoot raw, of course, as it’s partly firmware corrected when you are set to jpg. But it can be easily taken care of in Photoshop, and the good news is that this correction does not affect colorimetry, as it happens in M8 and M9 Leicas, for instance. And in some NEF files, under certain conditions.

If you don’t need such an extension, you can also consider the excellent 14-45. It’s a little gem, ultra compact, ultra light weight. Build is comparable to its longer sibling. Image quality has a certain Summicron feeling, if you know what I mean. And it outperforms even many Nikon primes or the much (IMHO) overrated Cosina-Voigtländer series: gorgeously built but very disapponting as far as IQ is concerned (they give what they cost, however). An interesting spec of the 14-45 is the filter size: a very common 52 mm.

By the way, has anybody tested the Panasonic 45-200 in real-life photography? Please, let me know your opinions.

PRIME RATE

In his comment to my last post, reader and blogger Terence Amos asks me to be more specific about the lenses I use to shoot my photographs. I'm aware I will disappoint many photographer friends, but I always use zoom lenses. At least in the last five years.
Of course I begun my photo adventure long before zooms got popular among photographers. Prime lenses were the only available lenses at the time. Almost all 35 mm bodies were sold with a bundled 50 mm "normal" lens. The addition of a 28 mm and a 135 mm (and perhaps a budget duplicator) was the standard way for a teenager to get a basic kit. In the welthier bags, one could find 20 or 21 mm wide angles (I was fond of my third-hand non-AI Nikkor UD 20 mm f 3.5), and/or 200 or 400 mm long telephoto lenses. Extreme angle lovers dared circular fish-eyes. I remember I diy'd one assembling a lens cap and a door's peephole lens bought at a hardware shop.
Then came my career as a pro. My Nikon F bodies, my Leicas, my Hasselblad, my 4x5 inch Arca Swiss and Linhof were all equipped with the best prime lenses I could afford. In 1980, for an assignment job, I gave in to the temptation of the Nikkor 43-86 f 3.5, definitely the worst lens I have ever experienced. Which pushed me back to the primes.
The best performing lens I have ever had was a Summicron 35 mm non-asph. With an M4-P body it made a dream couple. Moreover, after my switch to digital, it was the perfect match with the Epson R-D1's sensor (better than my old AI Nikkor glasses on Nikon D1x and D200 bodies). Until the day I borrowed my wife Daniela's 18-200 mm Nikon DX zoom. Suddenly I could forget about dust-on-sensor troubles, leave one kilogram (more than two pounds) of prime lenses at home and be ever ready to shoot, whitout the hassle of lens switching. Mind you, I'm not claiming it outperforms some (not any) good primes. I only say that it made possible taking shots I could never take without it, and that its few (and easily adjustable) flaws are negligible, compared to its indisputable advantages. It has been the fundamental tool in a huge project of mine on cargo boats (which will be finalized in 2011), where I had to continuously switch between focals while shooting from a moving ship.
My love story with zoom lenses had begun. Then came the Canon G10, with its excellent built-in 5x zoom glass, the pocket-sized Panasonic TZ-65, with its astounding 12x, and the Panasonic G1, with its bundled (and prime-level) 14-45. Except that more extended zooms had already spoiled me. So I bought the Panasonic 14-140, which definitely outperforms the though satisfactory 18-200 Nikon, and is permanently mounted on my GF1 (this is the answer I owed Terence).
Can I have a final word about my ideal lens?
A Micro Four Thirds, non-interchangeable, firmware-corrected, compact and self-collapsing barrel, self-closing cap, 28-300 mm equivalent. So that I can stop fussing about lenses and concentrate on the imaging process.
I know, prime lenses have an undeniable charm. As sailing boats have. But the best way I know to cross the ocean is flying. Even though I must confess I enjoy sailing, every now and then.

 

Addendum: the Panasonic 20 mm pancake is a little gem. If only I had more chances to use it!

OVER THE TOP

 

IN THE SUN

 

HMN BNGS (BOUNDARIES 6)

Wandering in Flickr is a rewarding experience. It's the perfect place where we can really get an idea about what photography making -and talking- means for most people in the present days. Provided that we restrict ourselves to look. I already explained why I decided to almost completely neglect the gallery I was running in Flickr and have my own blog open last year. I got tired of the social-network-ish side of the Flickr platform, where praising rituals and group dynamics tend to overwhelm the supposedly real purpose of the game: showing and seeing photographs and, doing so, improve one's own photo skills. Photography is a silent medium, that's why I love it this much. The buzz of superlatives so loudly resounding in Flickr is simply bothersome.
Yet a lot of interesting stuff can be found there, and I already featured in this blog the works of Flickr authors who really push the boundaries of their photography further away. Today I stumbled upon a Spanish -I reckon- photographer whose nickname is ndrgrnd, but I infer from his testimonials that his first name is Pedro. Unlike myself, he shots human beings. But he does it in a very special way. Thanks to lighting and postprocessing, one can feel the actual matter their flesh and faces are made of. In Pedro's photographs people appear as performing figures. As if they were, more than humans, the characters in a play. And his album were a neverending stage. Enjoy.

BLANK

HOME PRINTING AND MEDICAL CARE

I'd like to share with you this comment I posted today at the Mike Johnston's blog, The Online Photographer.

My friends and colleagues usually ask my opinion when they plan the purchase of some photo equipment. If it's a printer, my answer is always the same: "Find a good lab, possibly close to a parking area (I live in Rome), and save yourself the hassle-pain-frustration. Home printing is more like going to see an urologist."
As long as monitor makers will be allowed selling over-boosted (thus uncalibrated) viewing devices (even in laptop computers), making impossible to match what we see on the screen (a false rendering) with what ve get on paper (a true rendering most of the times), this will be the umpteenth swindle in an unregulated marketplace.
Of course, one can calibrate his own system. It only takes more money to spend, more time to waste, more pixel-peeping routine and, most of all, less real photography making.

Two truths should be made clear by magazines and sites devoted to product news and reviews:
- The home printing business works like drug selling in front of a school: the first fix (the machine with bundled inks) comes almost for free. Then, the next sets of ink cartridges often cost more than the printer itself. Let alone a box of A4 decent paper. And heads declogging is performed by wasting a huge amount of the same stuff (the ink) which clogged them.
- Home printing is far away from being as easy as using a Xerox copier (despite all appearances and propaganda). It takes time, skills and lots of paper and ink to waste in a long trial-and-error process.
- Home printing can be performed at a reasonable cost, only provided that high volumes of large format prints justify the purchase of a professional large format printer.

For me, getting to a decent level of professional-grade home printing took at least a couple of years and all the skills (and patience) coming out of more than three decades of darkroom experience. And a daily gruelling struggle against the printer's tantrums (whoever got an Epson 2000P knows how much a human being can hate a machine).
I have owned an Epson Stylus Pro 7600 for five years now, and after getting to manage it (not an easy task) I will stick to it as long as it will work and Epson will sell its ink cartridges. As for the average paper/ink cost of a 60x90 cm (23x35 in) exhibition-grade print, it's around ten dollars. Only twice the cost of an A4 print on fine-art paper made with my Epson R800, which I very rarely use: I prefer to go and see my urologist.

SCALED

 

PERSPECTIVE

BLURRED (BOUNDARIES 5)

Pixel peepers strike me. In their neverending quest for the best resolving lens/sensor match, they obsessively compare MTF diagrams and test charts, as if photography was all about a forensic reproduction of reality as we know it. Or a dull imitation of the Hyperrealist painting. They forget that the aim of photography is the act of generating an image through which author's visual statement will be put in touch with viewer's visual perception. For this purpose, photographers need smaller and lighter lenses, instead of bigger, heavier and more expensive ones. They need unobtrusive equipment, in-camera software corrections, and more extended zooms to avoid the hassle of carrying and changing primes. Shortly, they need more user-friendly cameras instead of worrying and massive imaging weapons.
Fortunately there are authors who are free and creative enough to brake the rules and push forward the boundaries of photography. Suddenly, a blurred picture is not a technophile's scandal but a revelation of the world we live in. British photographer Chris Friel does a great job with his hand-held long-exposure images. A visit to his website is an educational and inspiring experience. Enjoy.