State of the Art

Burt Keppler, Man of Action, Remembered

The irreplaceable Burt Keppler was warmly remembered at a memorial held last week at Manhattan's New School, fondly emcee'd by Keppler protegee and former Popular Photography Editor Jason Schneider. Family, friends, and colleagues such as Popular Photography Editor-in-Chief John Owens, Hachette Filipacchi CEO Jack Kliger, and Canon tech maven Chuck Westfall spoke about Burt, who shared his knowledge with generations of readers at Pop and before that at Modern Photography, as a man of kindness and -- though seemingly unperturbed by tumultuous events in photography -- of action. Which gives me the opportunity to run pictures of the Herbert Keppler semi-posable action figure.

The Little Lens That Could

The Lensbaby, an ingenious optic that brings view-camera style selective focus effects to digital, 35mm, and medium-format photography, just keeps on rockin'. The new movie-camera version of the lens, which we've covered in this space before, has been used by director Eric Schmidt to shoot a new music video for Bruce Springsteen's "Girls in Their Summer Clothes." Watch it (below) and you may long for something sharp!
--Russell Hart

Film, Stills, and Albert Maysles

As Dave Schonauer writes in his recent blog, Nubar Alexanian has photographed on the sets of many of Errol Morris's documentaries, work collected in a new book called Nonfiction. If you've never seen Morris's 1980 Gates of Heaven, do: I remember it as a brilliant series of talking still photographs. Another great documentary filmmaker, Albert Maysles, actually took his own pictures as he created such classics as Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens. (Those earlier films were produced with Albert's brother and sound man David, who died in 1987.) Albert was in fact a photographer first, and you can catch his vintage black-and-white prints from the 1950s and 1960s, color stills from the filming of Grey Gardens, and his recent "cinemagraphs" at New York City's Steven Kasher Gallery, where they're on display through March 15. The cinemagraphs (below) are printed directly from frames of actual Maysles films.

The High Cost of Printing: A Liquid Comparison

Everyone complains about the cost of inkjet printer ink, but have you ever sat down and figured out what you’re really paying? How does ink, as a commodity, compare to other valuable liquids? If I asked you how much you pay for a gallon of gas, I bet you’d know. Can you guess what a gallon of inkjet ink costs?
     My coworker Russell Hart and I sat down with our pencils to do the math. Now, this was a pathetic sight, because Russell and I are decent writers and editors, and Russell is also a very good photographer, but at math we are, um, rusty. We worked hard at it, though, and we were only dealing in rough approximations anyway, but feel free to check our findings.
     Russell checked the price of a 13ml cartridge of color ink for a Canon Pixma printer, which was about $15. That means a full liter would be about $1,170, which means a gallon of the stuff would cost roughly $4,000. 
    “Yikes,” is what I said when we figured that out. When you pay that much for ink, it gives you a whole new perspective on things—like crude oil.

The Lensbaby and the Diving Bell

Our Photography and the Movies issue, just out, proves that there’s a happily thin line between still and moving pictures—at least for the artists who ply both media. The respective technologies of film and photography have certainly crossed over in many ways. Canon’s D-SLR lenses borrow optical tricks from their video and film counterparts, for example. And going the other way, the Lensbaby (below)—which started life as an innovative still-photography tool—has now played a starring role in an Oscar-nominated French-produced film, The Diving Bell and the Butterfly.
 

Olympus's New-Age Firmware (and a word of advice to E-3 users running Mac OS X Leopard)

Olympus E-system users may have heard that their cameras' maker has issued firmware updates for the E-3 and E-510 D-SLR bodies. Go here to find out what the upgrades will do for your particular model. Unique to the "digital-specific" Olympus system is that accessories such as lenses and flash units can receive firmware upgrades too, and in fact the most recent batch included enhancements for the Zuiko 12-60mm and 100-300mm lenses. If mounted on the camera (keep the flash unit on), they are automatically detected in the update process.

We decided to update our in-house Olympus E-3, a camera we raved about in a recent review. In that writeup I mentioned that I'd shifted autofocus activation and operation from the shutter button to the AEL/AFL button on the back of the camera. I push the button with my thumb to make the camera focus, and release it to lock the focus. (Below, Olympus E-3 product manager Toshiyuki Terada demonstrating the new camera's capabilities.)

Hard Sex: Western Digital's My Book desktop drives

Now that I have your attention, you know as well as any other photographer that digital storage devices are as essential as they are unsexy -- by and large just boxes with a few plugs and a light or two. And external hard drives big enough to back up the contents of your computer become all but invisible when attached, doing their own thing with automatic backup software. You hardly know they're there -- until your computer crashes.

Western Digital's My Book external desktop hard drives are a different story, pun intended. They are sexy, in the sort of industrial-chic way that Apple has perfected. Upright and, well, booklike in shape -- though with a beautifully rounded spine --  they have an elegant satin-metal finish. In fact the My Book Studio Edition I've been testing comes in a silver tone that perfectly matches my G5 tower. (Now if only my socks matched.)

Why We Needed Henry Froehlich

The photographic realm has just lost two giants with the deaths of Popular Photography's Burt Keppler and, now, of Henry Froehlich, former head of medium-format mainstay Mamiya America. Though less visible than Burt to readers of photography magazines, Henry was just as influential in the photo industry, and in some of the same ways. Influence aside, he was a lovely, kindhearted man.

Hands On: Zeiss ZF Macros for Nikon

I've been shooting lately with two new Nikon F-mount Zeiss lenses, the ZF 100mm f/2 Makro-Planar T* and the ZF 50mm f/2 Makro-Planar T*. (I love it when they spell macro that way.) As you'd expect from a Zeiss-made optic they are both simply razor sharp, and are also impressively heavy, in these days of featherweight zooms, due in part to their full-metal barrel. No, they don't have autofocus--nor do any of the other "premium" manual-focus lenses Zeiss is making for Nikon F, Pentax K, and M42 (threaded) mounts--but I haven't really missed it.

What Sucks in Photography, in Our Opinion

Does everything suck? Sometimes it seems so. (And almost always after a long weekend.) The new issue of Wired lists a number of things that suck, including air travel, batteries, spam filters, credit cards, vending machines, plastic packaging, and human knees. That got us to thinking of photographic things that suck. Here are a few suggestions from the American Photo staff. (Check them out and then send in your own suggestions. You can also tell us what you think doesn’t suck.)

The Amazing Burt Keppler

There are fond remembrances out there already by those who knew Burt Keppler better than I did, including former Popular Photography editor Jason Schneider and former Pop managing editor Mason Resnick, both also Burt's colleagues at the late Modern Photography. Burt's old friends have tried their best to convey specifics of his brilliant career, though the man had such influence and such a presence in the photo industry that it would be impossible to account for so much history with anything but a thick biography. Read their tributes if only for the sense of a life fully lived, and I'll add just a few thoughts and recollections. (Below, Burt with fellow Pop Photo great Norman Rothschild.)

Picture-Perfect Peterson

Bryan Peterson has one of the best photographic eyes in the business, bringing a brilliant editorial style to his work for corporate clients such as Citibank, Microsoft, American Express, and, perhaps most visibly, UPS. Peterson has also written several very good photo how-to books. Now you can tap into his expertise and experience from the comfort of your computer--through Peterson's own online workshops, known as the Perfect Picture School of Photography. Don't be put off by the silly name (though if you don't get perfect pictures, you get your money back) or the awkward, redundant school slogan ("It is here where creativity is not only fostered, but encouraged"). Peterson, samples of whose work I've included here, has created a simple but effective Web-based teaching template, backed up by ample photographic talent that includes himself.

What Angelina Gave Brad for His Birthday

The tabloids had it that Angelina Jolie planned to give husband Brad Pitt a motorcycle for his birthday, which was on December 18. But we’re pleased to report, on this first day of Christmas, that Brad’s true love gave to him a camera. And not just any old digital SLR, but perhaps the most exotic camera in production today: the Littman 45 Single.

Apple in the Big Apple

Stepping into an Apple store is the closest thing in retail to heaven--not just all the cool hardware but a bright, comforting whiteness like that described by the near-dead. Apple’s new Big Apple megastore, which opened on Friday night, combines this experience with Manhattan chic. Its location should make New York City photographers especially happy: It’s on the corner of 14th Street and Ninth Avenue, right on the edge of the meatpacking district our ilk has taken over.

Camera Envy

I have a Nikon D3 on loan from Nikon, and need to get the camera into FedEx by the end of the day. I'm loathe to return it, as all-knowing Nikon product manager Lindsay Silverman predicted. Fitted with Nikon's big new 14-24mm f/2.8G ED AF-S zoom, it is a massive rig—so heavy that I found myself wanting a tripod mount on the lens, a weird idea for a wide-angle. But if you can't hold it, you don't need it.

Picture Windows

It's not a typical venue for a top-notch photography exhibition, but the storefront windows at Manhattan's big midtown Barnes & Noble are currently host to an eye-popping display mounted by photographer Brian Oglesbee to publicize his new monograph, Aquatique (published by Insight Editions, and about $50 at discount). Sixth Avenue passers-by can see a sampling of Oglesbee's spectacular large-scale silver prints of mysterious, watery black-and-white figure studies, created not with Photoshop but entirely in the studio.

Ambicam Debuts

Here's one camera you wouldn't want to throw: the Canon EOS-1Ds Mark IIIA. The A stands for ambidexterous, because as you can see it has a grip and shutter button on either side. On first look, no one in this office could quite figure out why it looked so oddly massive. Left-handed photographers, rejoice.

Building a Better Snapshot

Face-detection autofocus -- a system in which the camera can actually identify one or more faces in a scene, then focus on them rather than an arbitrary, fixed point -- has become the must-have feature in digital point-and-shoots. I just learned, though, that Japanese engineers are taking this notion a step further. They're reportedly developing technology that won't let you shoot until no one in your picture is blinking, and all eyes are open. They're also working on a similar system in which the camera won't let you take a picture until the face or faces in your scene are all smiling.

Yellow Journalism

And now for something completely different -- wait, wrong film! Before you go to the new Simpsons movie you might want to get in the spirit of D'oh! by simpsonizing yourself. Go to simpsonizeme.com, use the simpsonizing machine to upload a tight photo of yourself and answer a few questions about your appearance -- and, after some extended sound effects, you're rendered as a character from the best cartoon in history. We can't tell you what algorithm the site uses, but it did an uncanny job on one of our editors, as you can see below. (cell phone photo by David Schonauer) -- Russell Hart

Photojournalism and Facts on the Ground

A few days ago I received simultaneous e-mail newsletters from two photo agencies, one of them established and the other brand new. Today I got a third, from an agency that has practically defined photojournalism in our time. All three agencies represent good photographers. All three misrepresent the geopolitical and/or military realities of the Middle East, in particular the Arab-Israeli conflict.

John Szarkowski Understood Us

I will miss John Szarkowski (pictured at left as a younger man by Jacques-Henri Lartigue, whose work he first championed) as much for his brilliant photographic criticism as for his curatorial acumen. What made his writing special was that it drew from a deep understanding of photographic process and its direct, profound role in any photographer's work. Given the mechanical nature of our medium that understanding is essential to good criticism. I often feel embarrassed for photo critics and curators who seem to know little about how pictures are made. (I certainly never felt that way about Szarkowski.) When these critics aren't treating photographs as if they were transparent, they are characterizing them with a fudged, arch language that gives the writer a pass on studying the craft behind the art in which he or she is a putative expert.

Essential Reading

When we put together American Photo's annual Editor's Choice Awards feature—now in its eighth year—we always seem to be adding or subdividing categories, as the photo marketplace finds new ways to innovate. This year the luxury of Web space has allowed us to include separate sections for tripods and camera bags. And now, so as not to leave out the best of the many items that defy categorization, we've just put up our Imaging Essentials category.

Sally Mann's Favorite Picture (of hers)

This is Sally Mann's self-avowed favorite of the many photographs she has made in three decades as an artist. She said so at the recent LOOK3: Festival of the Photograph, though it wasn't the most revealing thing she shared with the audience at her marquee slide talk on the second night of Nick Nichols's "three days of peace, love, and photography."

PENIS ENMITY

I'm just back from Charlottesville, Virginia's first annual LOOK3: Festival of the Photograph, about which you'll find extensive coverage in our Newswire section. But this is more the right place for an anecdote relating to this phenomenal event and its creator, National Geographic photographer Nick Nichols. The story concerns the banner-sized prints of Nick's wildlife images that were strung from tree to tree all along Charlottesville's downtown pedestrian mall, the locus of the festival. But I'm not the one who should do the telling. I'll leave that to the C-ville Weekly, a hipper local alternative to the broadsheet Daily Progress with which I grew up. (We used to call it the Daily Regress.)

C-ville Weekly editor Cathy Harding begins her account in the June 5 editor's note, titled "It's a jungle out there." I've excerpted it in full below because you won't find this part on the newspaper's Website. When you're done reading, click here to find out how matters were resolved. (Read the bottom part of that Web page first.) I hope the pictures below, by photographer Kelly Kollar, will arouse your interest. That's Nick with the can of spray paint.
--Russell Hart

Tiger, Tiger, Hopping Mad

In the May/June issue of American Photo, now on newsstands, you'll find our exclusive On Location account of National Geographic photographer George Steinmetz's quest to photograph the elusive and solitary mountain lion, North America's biggest cat. Working in Arizona's Sonoran Desert, Steinmetz set up self-triggering infrared camera "traps" to capture the creature at a watering hole.