Postcards Of The Hanging

Bob Dylan, June, 1965

Do you ever wonder what happened to all of those images captured by Columbia Records staff photographers of Miles Davis, Bob Dylan and others over the years? Well wonder no more. According to The New York Times, they are all carefully preserved a small room, three floors below the ground level of Sony’s New York headquarters on Madison Avenue. Furthermore, many of those images are being made available from a Sony subsidiary, Icon Collectibles, as art-quality reproductions for prices ranging from $300 to $1,700. Read all about it here.

Shaky Wedding

So who ever said wedding photography was easy? Chinese photographer, Wang Qiang, was set up outside a century-old French missionary church in Bailu popular as a romantic backdrop for wedding portraits. He had already made some photographs and was waiting for the couple he was photographing to change clothes when the May 12 earthquake struck. Read the article in The New York Times and see Qiang’s images here.

Kibbles And Bits

Errol Morris Writes Again
Errol Morris (aka Dr. Photography) has favored us yet again with another lengthy photo dissection, this time of two photographs from Abu Graib. Read it here.

Summer And The Rebates Are Easy
Both Canon and Pentax have announced rebates on select DSLR products. The Canon program is in the form of an instant rebate and the Pentax promotion is the old, cut-up-the-box kind. Both offers end in July.

On The Road (With The D300 And D3)

Organ, Basilica, Catholic University, 2008

Recently, I took a Spring Break trip with my family through the Carolina's, Virginia and D.C. The original plan included a couple of days in Great Smokey Mountains National Park doing some serious landscape photography. I envisioned myself hunched over a tripod peering through the viewfinder of my D3 for hours. Naturally, I brought every piece of equipment I owned, including both the D300 and D3.

But the best laid schemes gang aft a-gley as Robert Burns wrote. I knew that we were in trouble when the weather turned nasty on the second day out. Cloudy, flat light is okay, but pouring rain is not. In addition, the landscape was still recovering from the harsh winter and there was barely any green to be had in the park. So much for that Appalachian Spring fantasy. The Great Smokey Mountains were scratched.

We spent a few days with relatives in South Carolina and the weather had started to improve. By that time, however, we had already cancelled plans to drive to coast and had instead converted the vacation into a college road trip for our daughter. So instead of an intense session in the Great Smokey Mountains, I wound up schlepping both cameras around Anderson, SC, several university campuses and Washington, DC.

Let me start by saying that the D3 is wonderful product of digital engineering. I can confirm everything every reviewer has said. I has amazing high ISO image quality and is blazingly fast. The viewfinder is huge and bright and full frame is a great step backward into the age of film. A 35 mm lens is now a 35 mm lens. The camera feels superb in your hands and it’s rock solid. That said, the D3 is not the camera you want to be hauling around the campus of Duke University or up and down the National Mall. It is just too heavy to be carried around all day with a modicum of comfort. At least by me anyway. Suffice it to say, the D3 made it out of it's bag exactly twice.

That left me with the D300. True, in terms of heft, the D300 is not a D3 or 1D Mark III, but it’s no G9 either. After a day of lugging it around Washington I was pretty darned sick of it I must admit. It is not a grab and go camera by any stretch of the imagination.

Furthermore, don’t be fooled into thinking that the D300 is a D3 in DX clothing. It is not, pure and simple. It’s high ISO performance is passable and I’ve seen better ISO 800 images out of a Pentax K10D. One would assume that for the trade off in weight you would get better image quality. No so, sad to say. The D300 neither feels as good nor is as solidly built as the D3. It is not completely weather sealed like the D3 or Pentax K20D so when the rains came (which they did quite frequently) it went under cover.

Despite not being a D3, the D300 is an improvement over the D200. The LCD is big and bright and is wonderful for checking color accuracy. Overall the image quality is somewhat improved, at least to my eye. Once you get used to the auto-focus it is very good. The 51 points do seem to confuse some lenses though. At 6 fps on the slow side, it blows the competition out of the water. Finally, the addition of live view – no matter how clumsily executed –- is welcomed.

To my mind, however, the biggest drawback of using any Nikon is the selection of Nikon lenses. While Nikon has been busily introducing zoom lenses, their selection of primes is abysmal. The 50 mm f/1.4 was introduced in 1995 and does not even feature AF-S (silent wave motor) much less any of the newer developments. The same goes for the 35 mm f/2. The 28 mm f/2.8 and 24 mm f/2.8 are even older. One of their best, the 85 mm f/1.4, also dates from 1995. Indeed, all of Nikon’s primes are due for upgrades, except for their extremely long lenses. Neither Canon nor Nikon have anything like Pentax’s series of pancake lenses.

Insofar as zooms are concerned, their best new release, the Nikkor 16-85 mm f/3.5-5.6G VR, is a DX lens with a 1.5 crop factor. Although it will work on the D3, it sort of defeats the purpose of having a full frame camera. The two new full frame zooms are, frankly, overweight and over-priced. The lack of any light weight, high quality, weather sealed lenses – zoom or otherwise - makes an already heavy kit even more burdensome.

Had our road trip worked out as originally envisioned I suspect this article would be about the D3, not the D300. As it was, neither camera fit the conditions very well. With its size and weight, the D3 was useless for the fast moving photography I was doing. While the D300 was serviceable, it certainly would not have been my first choice. That said, if a few ounces one way or the other do not matter to you, the D300 is a fine camera in many – if not all – respects and one well worth considering.

Lenses For Your Nikon

Nikon expert Thom Hogan has just published a lengthy article here about choosing the right lenses for your Nikon DSLR. While I don’t agree with everything he says (I happen to like the Nikkor 70-300 mm), as is usual his piece is thoughtful and informative. I thought the introductory discussion about the importance of the lens to overall image quality and the differences between film and digital was particularly interesting.

Wired at the Preakness Stakes

Having been a hard-core railbird back in another lifetime, I am always interested in what is going on in thoroughbred horse racing. I know the sport has diminished significantly in popularity since I followed it on a daily (Racing Form) basis. And I know it has been roundly criticized since the death of Eight Belles at the Kentucky Derby. Nevertheless, the fact remains that we are on the brink of witnessing the first Triple Crown winner in 30 years in the horse of Big Brown. That’s history.

All of this leads me to a great article on the Reuters Photographers' blog here about how the Reuters team got the above photograph at the Preakness Stakes. Must reading for anyone interested in sports photography.

On Top Of The World

Chagxi Cering/Xinhua, via Reuters

The Olympic Torch has made it to the top of Mount Everest as shown above. I’d be interested in the camera that made it to the top to take the picture.

I’m Ashamed

I just read Paul Butzi’s SoFoBoMo book, A Good Walk. You can read it here and I suggest that you do. First of all, it is beautiful -- beautifully written and illustrated. Whether you love dogs (and who doesn’t) or landscapes or both, this project is worth your time. It reminds me that we humans (and our dogs) are a part of nature, not separate from it. And A Good Walk is inspirational. Remember, this was done in a month folks.

I had another reaction upon completing the book. I felt ashamed. While I am spending my time trying to decide what new camera and lens to buy or trying to get my pigment printer to work (another story), these crazy SoFoBoMo folks are actually accomplishing something of great value. While I am spending my time surfing the Internet for news and pixel peeping, these people are creating art. Art, for God’s sake. We should all be ashamed, but this project should also be an inspiration to all of us who say we love photography to get off of our dead butts and do something.

‘Nuff said. Now I've got to get to work on my own SoFoBoMo book!

21 Nights

Speaking of photo books, Prince is said to be working on 21 Nights a "photographic essay". The book will be published this fall by Atria Books (an imprint of Simon & Schuster). 21 Nights is based on Prince's series of sold-out concerts at London's O2 Arena. Prince will supply the words and the 124 images will come from the camera of Randee St. Nicholas. 21 Nights will also include a CD of after-hours jams entitled Indigo Nights. I would have illustrated this news with an image of Prince, but he has been known to sue Internet outlets. Sorry.

SoFoBoMo

Have you heard about SoFoBoMo (Solo Photo Book Month) yet? This crazy idea concocted by Paul Butzi models itself after the National Novel Writing Month and the National Solo Album Month. The object here, however, is to create a photography book, from scratch, in 31 days. Take the pictures, edit them, design a layout and cover plus write the essays. As unlikely as it is that many would take Paul up on his challenge, quite a few have and the results are amazing. Gordon McGregor has written an article about SoFoBoMo with lots of links here. SoFoBoMo’s website can be found here. There’s still time, so get going.