I Now Understand Those Who Shoot Leica

I have often made fun of Leica and Leica users. Their products are wildly overpriced and philosophically rooted in the photographic dark ages. That said, as time has gone on, I've begun to understand them more and more. Now, I'm not about to go out and buy Leica — that's likely (Leicaly?) never going to happen — but I am completely stopping my mockery.

In fairness to me, I mostly stopped mocking Leica some time ago. My reasoning for this was that Leica, price and all, was a way for truly serious photogs to differentiate themselves from the Best-Buy-shopping, APS-C shooting, photographic hoi-polloi. The rise of digital, and Instagram, and everything else that has resulted in the majority of photos ever taken having been taken in the past five years, has concomitantly caused a severe drop-off in the work required and the prestigiousness of photography as an art.

Fifty years ago, walk in to a county fair and only a few people had SLR cameras. Go now and half the damned crowd is rocking Nikon or Canon. It's very difficult to feel in the slightest bit special in the face of that. It's hard to feel as though you are doing something that others are not.

How absurdly elitist and pretentious! you may be yelling. And there is a degree of that going on, I'm sure. But who cares!? Of course there is! We all want to feel as though our chosen hobby is something a bit unique. We want to feel as though we're doing something that separates from the crowd enough to be a part of an identity. Otherwise, what the hell will one person have to talk about with another person when they are all doing and thinking the same damned thing?

Moreover, I have heard too many stories of photogs showing up for work with standard gear only to see palpable disappointment on the faces of their employers. This disappointment immediately disappears when the Leica or Hasselblad comes out. Pretentious? Yes. But it's also good business.

This is also the reason why I think that both medium format and Leica have seen huge sales increases in the past few years. Leica went from nearly dead to the best sales of its history. Hell, even wacky, scanning backs have seen sales increases every year for the past ten years!

The second reason for my ceasing Leica-hate, and the reason for this article, is that Leica is the only company out there that doesn't fuck around. No, Mamiya, Phase One, and Leaf aren't fuckin around either, but they are medium format companies aimed and high-end professionals. Of course they aren't fucking around. I'm talking about SLR companies and companies that cater to enthusiasts as well as professionals.

What do I mean by not fucking around. I mean that Leica doesn't release a product and immediately orphan it. Leica doesn't release crap lenses for high prices to protect their higher-end products, or in many cases not release lenses at all! Leica doesn't release crap anything. Leica's design and philosophy is simple and well-known. They never create a bad lens. They never create a bad product for their philosophy. Leica is always good.

You have to pay through the nose for it, yes, but it is always good. It is never bad. Leica's philosophy may not be compatible with what you want or need, but you must admit that vis-a-vis Leica and its history, its products are always good.

No other camera company is doing that. Canon, Nikon, Sony, Olympus, Panasonic, all of them fuck around to no end. They release MOUNDS of garbage: crap lenses, shitty cameras, stupid products; and even if they release a good product, like the EOS 7D or NEX-7, they abandon them! Fuji is the only other company that even comes close, which, again, is why I give them a pass for their failings.

An example that sticks in my mind because it is in the news is lenses for current mirrorless cameras. Digital cameras presented a new opportunity for camera companies: software correction. In camera, previously destructive things such as aberration, distortion, vignetting, and flare could be reduced via software tuned to the characteristics of a particular lens. Olympus and Panasonic have taken this philosophy and run like Forrest Gump with it.

On its face, this sounds great. A poor lens can be made to seem like a better lens. But as Panasonic and Olympus have proven, they take this ability and then try to charge the same amount for their lenses. Go to a website that measures raw distortion of the 12mm, the 12-35mm, the 35-100mm, or any other of their laughably overpriced pieces of shit. The distortion is mind-blowing. I'm talking 6%. Back in the days before software correction, a 6% distortion would be considered a broken lens.

But with software, these companies have completely abandoned fixing these problems via in-lens corrections. They now rely on software. If we received a discount on the lens price, then this would fine. But we don't. They create a shitty lens, hide the shit with software, and then try to charge full price for the lens.

No. Fuck you.

Leica would never do this. Leica would never correct in software. If someone ever even floated the idea, that engineer would be forced to commit seppuku.

Make no mistake, this is a conscious choice on the part of these companies to best rip you off. For example, there are two 12mm prime lenses for the Micro 4/3 system: the SLR Magic f/1.6 and the Olympus f/2.0. The SLR Magic has distortion of 1.26% and costs $500. The Olympus has distortion of 5.4% and costs $800! Moreover, the SLR Magic is nearly a full stop brighter. In fairness, the Olympus is sharper and does correct aberrations in-lens, but in the battle of optical quality, the SLR Magic wins... and does it for cheaper.

This makes me angry and it should make you angry. They are tricking you into buying something of lower-quality. Abandoning systems should make you angry because the value of a lens is at least partially dependent on how much I can sell it for in the future. Crap lenses should make you angry because if other lenses are much better, the value of my purchased lens will drop as better lenses are released. Why do you think Leica lenses frequently increase in value after they are released.

Because, again, Leica has never released a bad product.

So, after all is said and done, I would never buy Leica. I respect Leica and their history, and respect those dedicated enough to deal with the system, but I just could never buy it. They are incompatible with the way I shoot and what I want to shoot. But I will not longer hate on them and those who use them. They may be expensive, but they are also unique.

And how do you put a price on that?

Photographic Cliches That I HATE

There are a number of conversational cliches in the world of photography. Many of them are just demonstrably wrong, like "Olympus Color," or "The Leica Look." A few others are taken as damn-near gospel, even to the most cynical photogs.

Sharpness doesn't matter: This cliche is trotted out most frequently by Leica people who are trying to justify their hilariously overpriced lenses.¹ But that doesn't mean that others don't fall back to this old canard. Anyone who is trying to defend their system of choice, even when said system has some lens that positively sucks, will try to argue that sharpness doesn't matter. It's how the lens "feels," whatever the hell that means.

Sharpness does matter and everyone knows it. Pixel-peeping is also more than a geeky pastime. By analyzing the smallest elements of the image, we can provide a semi-quantitative measurement for the later, full impression of the image. Anyone who has ever dealt with medium or large format film knows that all of that extra detail, even when printed small, combines within the visual field to provide an impression of texture. Only after pixel-peeing does one understand what this texture is or from whence it comes, and it is entirely predicated on how fine the detail is. Sharp lenses make images pop.

And that is only the artistic element to the argument! There is a large, practical argument as well. A sharp lens that extracts the maximum of detail from an image renders an image that is flexible. I have greater freedom to crop and cut the final image while retaining detail and texture.

The camera doesn't matter: This is something that I have only ever heard from internet commenters who want to think that they know what they are talking about.

It goes like this: person A asks "I want the best images. Should I get camera X, Y, or Z?"

Person B immediately answers with "It doesn't matter what camera, it's the photographer!"

This piece of total nonsense not only fails to answer the question, it insults the asker! Two birds with one moron. Said moron is doing this to show off their photographic bona fides, such as they are, and convince everyone that their "art" is just so damned good that they don't even worry about the equipment. The statement is not only insulting, it's completely wrong. If it was true, pro-level cameras wouldn't exist. We would all use cheap point-&-shoots.

For many environments, you need a very expensive camera to get the best shots. Wildlife and bird photography requires a lens the size of Ron Jeremy's naughty bits. Great landscape photography requires a giant sensor with the dynamic range of John Barrymore. Great portrait photography requires a lens that has an aperture the size of a dinner plate. All of these features cost lots of money. It is NOT the photographer; it is a synergy of artist and tools. Both need to be present.

*Insert Product Name* Color: Again, this tripe is spouted by someone trying to defend their camera company of choice. A very common one is Olympus color. I think that this is because Olympus has some cachet to its name and sells cameras priced within reach of enthusiasts. They then have to explain why they would buy an overpriced camera with a sensor that is always two steps behind the competition.

There was a time when color actually meant something. Lenses can cast very distinct hues over images, and a photographer's choice of film had significant effects on the final color of the image. Today, color can be set to whatever the photographer wants in a post-production program like Lightroom. There is no such thing as "color," anymore.

Three Dimensions: AGAIN, this nonsense comes from someone trying to justify their choice of camera system. This one is so abstract, so subjective, and so impossible to quantify that I essentially never hear it from those in the hoi poloi world of Canon or Nikon. Usually, this comes from an enthusiast who has bitten the bullet and bought a medium format camera. They now need to justify this purchase against those who bought a Nikon D3X and an entire briefcase of Zeiss lenses for the cost of a single digital back from Leaf.

Generally, a sense of three-dimensionality in a two-dimensional image requires shallow depth of field. This allows lines of contrast of varying degree to fade in and out and thus provide the eye with reference to infer depth in space. The larger the sensor, the more blur, and, sometimes, the more gradual the blur. But this is heavily dependent on the lens and similar effects can be had from a Canon or Nikon.

But that's not enough for these people! No! To rationalize the purchase, they claim extra dimensionality even when the aperture is set small enough to put everything in the image in focus. I don't think that I have ever heard this nonsense from top-pro photographers. They have medium format because they need massive resolution for their overly-glossy spreads in GQ, or whatever they do. Point is, they buy this for no other reason than to earn money. As such, they don't need to justify it. They need resolution; resolution costs a lot. It is a simple equation.

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1: I don't mean to disparage Leica. I mean to disparage the people who like Leica. And not even all of them.

A Treatise On Digital Noise

Noise measurements garner a great deal of flak on message boards across the interwebs. Much of this is directed at whatever website is doing the measuring by another website that doesn't have has many readers.

A website that receives more than its fair share of this flak is DPReview, which measures per-pixel noise in its charts as opposed to overall image noise. This means that camera with smaller photosites will usually have a disadvantage over cameras with larger ones, and cameras with higher pixel counts will lag behind competitors with fewer, even if overall noise is identical.

The only website of which I am aware that measures overall image noise is DxO Mark, but this has practical problems as well. I'm not sure why, but their measurements very frequently do not jibe with my everyday experiences with cameras. For example, I'm a Micro 4/3 fan, and they list the Panasonic GH2 as inferior to the GH1, even though every photo that I ever took confirmed that the GH2 was superior, or at the very least identical.

For many reasons, I fall on the side of DPReview. In much the same way that I argue pixel-peeping is actually a worthwhile endeavor, analyzing pixels as opposed to the image is important. The only reason that I will address today is low-light noise, which is frequently incorrectly analyzed when looking at an entire picture.

In a well-lit environment, where every pixel is exposed beyond the noise floor and thus each pixel has true data, an overall image analysis is very accurate. But the instant that light levels fall and the environment gets more challenging, pixels will start to fall below the noise floor. One large pixel when exposed to a poorly-lit environment is much less likely to fall below the noise floor than a smaller pixel. So even if you have four pixels, averaged together, they've all fallen below their noise floor, resulting in no actual data. I use images from DPReview to illustrate that they are correct in their method.

In the above images, we have the SLT A77, A55, and the NEX-7. According to DxOMark, and a recent article at an A77-defending/DPReview-attacking website, the A55 and the A77 should be identical, and that any difference is the fault of DPReview's analysis protocol. Look at the 100% patch of darkness at the top. The A77 is much noisier than either the A55 or the NEX-7. "Ohhhhhh", they will say, "that is at 100%! We must analyze the whole image!"

Ok. Fair enough. Again, DxOMark and this website say the A55 should be almost identical with the A77. Then why, even at the small size I am using for the actual article layout, is the A77 noticeably noisier? Look at the blue cast, the reduced reds and greens, and the overall loss of contrast. Click on the image to get the large version and the difference is even more obvious. DxOMark shows no difference. DPReview does. In the actual end result image, there is a difference. Not a small, kinda'-sorta' there difference, either. An obvious one, even at low-resolution.

This impression is only strengthened by appeal to DPR's Studio Comparison tool. At every ISO setting, even when controlling for variances in exposure, the A55 pulls more detail out of the dark areas. That means that DPReview is right, DxOMark is wrong, as is the website attacking DPReview.

It is in this environment that ISO becomes critical to good images, and it is in this environment where overall image analysis becomes less important than a quick check at pixel-level performance. Because why bother with an overall analysis when one can quickly analyze a small group of poorly-exposed pixels and immediately be aware of the sensor's characteristics?

DPReview is the lord of camera review sites for a reason. They get shit right. They may not be as scathing in some of their reviews as they should be, but the raw materials to make your own conclusion are uploaded at high-resolution, without stupid crops and page-after-page of self-congratulating talk about art and photography. That is the reason why they are far and away the #1 photography website on the planet. They have no pretenses. They review cameras. That's all.

All of that said, I think that since cameras are tools, a website should start reviewing them based on tasks completed. For example, to determine the quality of a sensor, a color chart should be placed on a wall with a very dim, white light. Then, don't just publish the images, publish what settings were required to successfully image that chart such that all of the colors were represented correctly. That lets the photographer know in how extreme of an environment the tool will still successfully function.

Oh, and I should add that I do not dislike DxOMark. In fact, it is my second favorite photography website behind DPReview. Its data is something that should be taken as part of a gestalt of data from it and other websites , but very few websites are as thorough, extensive, and expansive as DxO. Most of the time, my personal experiences jibe perfectly well with DxO, but that is compared to DPReview, where my personal experiences essentially always jibe with their work.

Some Tips For Practicing Photographers

I'm not a great photographer, if you couldn't tell from my photos. I've been learning, off and on, for the past few years. I started with an EOS 20D way back in 2004 to take product photos for a computer company that I was trying to start and haven't stopped since.

I've picked up a few nuggets of wisdom that generally fly in the face of most photographers. First, the big one, lens sharpness matters. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying. Because if it doesn't matter, why do they all spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on sharp lenses? Because sharpness matters.

Not for the image, per se, but for the flexibility of that image. If you have a sharp lens, you can take a photo and then cut, chop, and otherwise mutilate the image without a significant reduction in final quality. A sharp picture on an 8MP camera is more flexible than a blurry picture taken on a 20MP camera.

My second bit of wisdom that I've learned is that anyone who tells you that it's not the camera, it's the photographer is lying. Yes, the photog matters a lot. A shitty photog will take shitty photos with a Leica just as well as with a Lomo. But think of it this way, a crappy hunter will kill nothing with a pea shooter or with a bazooka. But a great hunter still won't kill anything with the pea shooter.

I've taken some great photos with my cell phone, but not many, and only in very particular circumstances. Likewise for my point-&-shoot and any other recording device. What the tool is good at is critical to the final photo. And in most cases, to get the shot that makes people stop and go "wow" requires a beefy camera.

Not insanely beefy, mind you. But you do need a camera that's north of $500 bucks, and you'll need multiple lenses in the same area. The camera matters a lot for flexibility and being able to get ANY shot that comes your way.