Oh Fun. Olympus sent me another camera to play with.

I came back from somewhere this morning to find a nice, brown cardboard box sitting in front of the door to my house.  I shuffled into the studio and grabbed my Bowie knife and slashed it open.  Inside, with no notes or invoices was a small box containing the new Olympus ZX-1.  Now I've been around the block with Canon G-10's and G-11's and I've played with the G-12 but the intriguing thing about this tiny camera is that I can use the EV-1 finder from my Pen EP2 kit to get a full bore, eye level, state of the art finder image and I don't have to hold the little beast at arm's length like a goon.

Give me a couple of week's play time and I'll try to write something.  But as you know, I'm not very prolific and it may take me some time to really do it justice.....

The battery is charging.

Random Thoughts on a warm and windy Saturday.

First up:  I'm so happy with all the responses (online and offline) that I got about the last blog post.  People really do want to understand why they photograph and what it all means.  At least my readers pretty much uniformly understand that technical prowess should be a means to an end and not an end goal.  Several people wrote to say that they couldn't express what it was they wanted to capture in pictures until they had the skills to make the statement and I think that's a different way of looking at the same equation.  I think we need to have more give and take about projects that are dear to our hearts.  And maybe we need to share picture stories more often.  People are always welcome to post links within their comments as long as it's not spam-o-rama.

Second:  A few little items that have made life fun and intriguing for me in the past few days.  I've always liked working with the manual focus Zeiss lenses I've been buying up like a college kid buying pizzas, but I've had issues with focusing.  In good light....no problem.  In marginal light those sucky autofocus enabled focusing screens are awful.  I end up depending on the focus confirmation and I am disappointed from time to time.

Yesterday I got the first of a mess of split image rangefinder focusing screens I've been researching and ordering.  It's the EC-S screen for the 1Dmk2N (and all other early 1D camera variants out there).  The screen was a whopping $30 and it's changed things for me.  A nice split screen in the middle that show very clearly when you've achieved sharp focus......two images come together as one!!!  Then there are two concentric circles around the center that give a sharper (more aggressive??) indication of in and out of focus.  The rest of the screen seems brighter too.  If you get one be sure to head into the custom function menu and switch screens there so the meter will continue to be accurate.

I also ordered a screen for the Canon 5Dmk2.  It's not a Canon screen so I'm holding my breath in anticipation.  It comes from a company called,  Cowboy Studios.  It's called a 180 something or other...

How they decide on these names I just don't know.  Once I found this screen I was emboldened to also order one for the 7D but I look forward to its arrival with much trepidation because the screens in 7D's are not made to be user replaceable.  But they include tools and an "instruction book."

If you look hard and long enough on the web you'll find just about anything.  I'll try my luck with the 5D2 and the 7D but I won't mess with the 60D because it's currently my "go to" video production camera and I'm right in the middle of a project.

I came across the photo below.  It's from 2006 or 2007.  I was doing a PR job in Scottsdale, AZ for the folks at Freescale Semiconductor.  I thought it was a silly photograph and that the more curmudgeonly among my critiques would have fun sending me "interesting comments."  Lost to the crop are my amazingly cool black shoes.  Interesting shoot coming up this Tues.  I've been reminded by the client several times that I am currently "under NDA" but since it's something newsy I look forward to spilling the details a few days later.  After the embargo is finished.

I've decided to go ahead and do the book revision project I anguished about all last week.  Does that mean we'll have a flurry of Pollyanna/Happy blog posts?  Maybe.  That's it.  Tomorrow is my first afternoon off in ages.  You probably know what that means.  A big walk thru downtown Austin to check out the value of that new focusing screen in conjunction with some manual focus piece of glass.  Either that or some portraits.  Hope you're having a good weekend.  Kirk

On the idea of photographic education. Maximum bling?

It's always about the look.  Not about the light.

If my son were to come to me and ask me to teach him photography what would I say?  How would I do that?  There are many people today who would tell an aspiring photographer that he needn't pursue a traditional education at a college or university.  They would state (and believe) that everything you need to learn to be successful is on the web or can be learned at a series of daylong or weekend long workshops.

But would that be enough to make one a good photographer or even a successful photographer?

I guess the first thing we should do if we pursue this topic is to make a demarcation between good and successful.  Most would point to financial success as a critical marker.  And in that regard mastering the bare mechanics of a plastic art and wrapping a cocoon of business strategy around it might be enough to engender what the typical man in the street would call success.  If you can make a process routine, predictable and appealing you may well be able to somewhat mass produce the process and sell the same basic steps over and over again.  The process of learning from lighting diagrams, charts and "behind the scenes" shot is, to good photography, what "paint by numbers" is to real painting.

As the field of photography broadened over the last decade it attracted more and more people who, by dint of their demographic, didn't have the luxury of learning in any other way than by putting their feet on the "dance diagram on the floor" and trying to follow the numbered steps.  And I understand that for many this was the available path.  A photographer educated in this way is looking for rules and steps that make the photographic product easier and repeatable.