Category Archives: Commentary

Commentary

Tough Times for Photo Sites and Photographers Who Use Them

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Jim M. Goldstein posted an article at his blog yesterday that deals with recent changes at Photoshelter and Digital Railroad, two sites that have provided galleries, archival storage, and sales/licensing resources for many photographers. Photoshelter (which I’ve checked out and which seems to have a lot of interesting resources to offer) recently changed their service, eliminate an important element of what they originally offered to photographers. Digital Railroad suddenly announced its shutdown with almost no notice earlier this week, leaving many photographers in the lurch. In both cases, it appears that these services ran into funding problems that interfered with their business plans. Follow the link back to Jim’s article to read more background on this.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit recently as well. Being somewhat internet-savvy, I have worked with web hosting companies and more or less operated my own server applications, including the software that supports this blog/web site and other software that supports my gallery. This has not been without its problems. Ignoring for the moment the fact that hosting companies can also fail (keep good backups! of everything!), I ran into a serious customer support issue with my previous hosting company and had to move my entire web presence to another host (which seems to be doing a fine job, by the way) on very short notice. Although it is probably a story for another time, I’ll acknowledge that my choice to manage my own web presence cost me a ton of time during the past month, and has left me with some problems at this site that are still unresolved. (Notably a number of photos are now missing and, in some cases, stories are now linked to the wrong photographs.)

During this little web debacle that I’ve dealt with, I almost came to a decision to host my photographs at one of these commercial photography sites. I looked at three: pbase, zenfolio, and Photoshelter. While a full review is beyond the scope of this post, I will say that all three have a lot of worthwhile features to offer, the pricing seems reasonable to me, and I came “that close” to moving my photographs to one of the three. While it still could happen, at this point I’m going to sit tight for a while and see what happens to this segment of the photography industry first.

Commentary, Equipment

‘Low End’ Cameras – Interesting Choices

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An interesting juxtaposition caught my attention this morning.

Yesterday Michael Reichmann posted a very interesting article (“You’ve Got to Be Kidding“) in which he compares the image quality from the (arguably high end point and shoot) $500 Canon G10 with that obtained from his high end Hasselblad medium format digital system. While some are misrepresenting the point of his article to be that the G10 is equal to the Hassy MF system (it isn’t, and he didn’t write that), the significant point is that for many uses the G10 can produce good size prints (13″ x 19” in Reichmann’s article) that are largely indistinguishable from those that came from the MF camera.

At about the same time I saw a link to a dealmac.com posting about sub-$600 prices for the Canon XSi 12.2MP APS-C DSLR with the quite decent EFS 18-55mm image stabilized lens. Anyone who looks at the features of this camera objectively and knows about the generally quite good reviews of this lens understands that this is a tremendous value for a camera system that is more than capable enough for the vast majority of DSLR purchasers.

So, on one hand we have a small almost pocketable camera (the G10) that can produce excellent quality prints as large as most people will ever produce (much larger, in fact). If your point of comparison is DSLRs of a year or two ago – $1000+ in many cases – this is a quite amazing thing, and could induce many buyers to think about the G10 or a similar camera, either as the camera or as an adjunct when traveling light is important. But wait, the cost of a quite decent DSLR isn’t $1000+ any more – it now appears to be perhaps only $100 more than that of the G10.

Commentary, Photographs: Sierra Nevada

Cascade in Lee Vining Canyon, Autumn Snow (black and white)

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Cascade in Lee Vining Canyon, Autumn Snow (black and white)

Cascade in Lee Vining Canyon, Autumn Snow (black and white). Sierra Nevada, California. October 12, 2008. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.

Cascade on Lee Vining Creek on an autumn afternoon following an early snowfall.

I’ll make the text short this time since yesterday’s post included the same photo – and the backstory – in color. So this is a black and white version of the same photograph from Lee Vining Canyon. I thought I’d try this since a) there wasn’t really a lot of color in the scene and b) the “cold” effect of the scene seems to work fairly well either way.

keywords: lee vining, creek, canyon, cascade, water, fall, waterfall, blur, motion, forest, ice, snow, fall, autumn, fall, october, cold, tree, bush, rock, boulder, log, scenic, travel, landscape, stock, california, usa, sierra, nevada, tioga, pass, yosemite, national park, black and white

Commentary

Canon EF 35mm f/2.0 Lens

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I almost titled this post “In Praise of Cheap Little Lenses” – but that would have been inconsistent with my other lens report posts, so I’ll leave the title as is.

I recently picked up a copy of this lens for several reasons. First, it is very small and light, and there are times when a single slightly-wide prime can be just the thing. It is also fairly inexpensive, especially compared to other Canon alternatives. On top of that it is a fine optical performer, especially if you use it where it is strongest – shooting at relatively small apertures on full frame and/or using it as a essentially a “normal prime” on a crop body.

I have had a few weeks to use mine now. I’ve mostly used it for landscape photographs where I had some flexibility to compose the shot by moving forward/backward or in which the 35mm focal length turned out to be exactly right. (In some cases I first did the shot with my 24-105mm L zoom, and when I noticed that I was at 35mm I switched to the prime.) In general terms the optical performance of this little lens is quite decent, but when stopped down to f/8 or smaller it really shines – it is capable of producing photographs with very good resolution.

Are there any negatives to this lens? Of course, but for my purposes none of them are “deal breakers.” The AF system of the lens is (notoriously) noisy. Users have described it as sounding like “buzzing bees.” I don’t think it is that bad, but it is not as quite as most other Canon lenses. In addition you must move a switch if you want to focus manually rather than rely on autofocus – other more modern lenses will let you do either with out choosing between them. Its performance wide open is nothing all that special. Finally, it is a small and cheap looking lens! But that doesn’t really matter, as far as I’m concerned. I’m far more interested in what it does than in what it looks like.

One interesting note… Canon makes a much more expensive and highly regarded 35mm f/1.4 L lens. Some who think they need the “best” go straight for that excellent lens – but not everyone will benefit from that choice. While the f/1.4 L is reportedly a very fine lens and excellent at the larger apertures, if you don’t need f/1.4 it may provide no real advantages at all. For example if you mainly need a 35mm lens to shoot stopped down there is little or no advantage to the more expensive lens. Tests I’ve reviewed suggest that the f/2 cheapie produces equivalent IQ at the smaller apertures.

G Dan Mitchell Photography
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