Speaking Frankly

From The Keppler Files: February 1969

It should be evident to anyone dabbling in single-lens reflexes that total automation is just around the corner. We have gone from the hand-held meter to the built-in but not coupled, to the built-in and coupled to the shutter speed only and thence to the almost universally used through-lens metering system coupled to the shutter speed and aperture controls. We simply center the needle and shoot, often much too oblivious to what exposure we use. If the needle's centered and the exposure's right, who cares if it is f/4 or f/5.6, if it's 1/60 or 1/125 sec? We should care but often don't or we're too careless in operating the camera or just too lazy to look. As a result we're ignorant of whether we've stopped all the action or how much depth of field we've really got. We're letting the machine do our thinking, and since it can't think, our thinking is as often as not, not being done at all.

Inside Straight: Optical Miracle

The amazing story of the Biotar

When photojournalists David Douglas Duncan, Jun Miki, and Carl Mydans reported in 1950 on the excellence of Japanese optics, thus starting the Japan photo industry ball rolling, little did anyone imagine that within 10 years these camera types and lenses would be obsolete, fit primarily to be collectors' curios.

What country would be responsible for the next generation of cameras and lenses? Not Japan, but Germany.

From The Keppler Files: December, 1995

Many a small ballhead simply gives way under pressure. You can make a quick check even without a camera by tightening the ballhead knob or lever and then trying to move the head with your fingers. If it moves, it's a bummer and should be rejected. Fastening the ballhead to the longest and heaviest lens and camera you intend to use is an even better test.

Don't attempt removal of a quick-release plate with a screwdriver; the screwdriver blade has a straight edge, while most quick-release-plate tripod-screw bases have a rounded slot designed for a coin. A screwdriver can damage the fastening slot. I know -- I've done it.

OOPS...

Somehow a three line caption which I did not write crept onto page 33 of my Pop Photography May Inside Straight column. However I should have caught this interloper on page proof but failed to notice the intruder. It was my error. The unwanted caption about Biotar lenses reads: "OLDER AND BETTER: Subjective Quality Factor tests show the Biotar of a half century ago beats newer imitators in big enlargements."
    I showed Subjective Quality Factor Test for the Biotar and a 2006 50mm f/1.8 Nikkor. My own conclusion about the merits of such lenses is clearly stated at column end: "If you test one (i.e. Biotar) you may be amazed as I at how very good a 1950 58mm f/2 Biotar is, even against today's best."

From The Keppler Files: May, 1993

If automation is your bete noir, avoid it or shut it down -- at least those features or conveniences you find indigestible. Autofocus can be turned off in favor of manual focus. Switch program exposure to aperture preference or manual exposure. But if you're secretly a camera tech addict, hooked on using all the new fab features, and hate yourself in the morning, don't blame the camera.

While we could handle most outdoor picture taking at small apertures and higher shutter speeds, it was more often indoors where we jousted using exciting large-aperture, slow shutter-speed method of picture taking. Indoors, our families, friends, and strangers became fascinating tableaux as we watched the interaction between subjects and surroundings as angle, composition, expressions, and existing light changed on our focusing screens. Portraits by window light were highly rewarding. We tried to be as unobtrusive as possible so life would go on while we, the silent observers, preserved it. Our subjects had character and dimension. We even became intrigued with still-life close-ups of wine glasses or the graceful changing curls of cigarette smoke wafting upward from ashtrays.

And when we decided the moment was right for smoke, wine glasses, or people, we pressed the shutter and recorded exactly what we saw and how we saw it. (Our further labors in the darkroom to enhance what we saw or wanted to see, is another story, full of pro-con argument for another day.)

Image stabilization here today, gone tomorrow?

Perhaps the  biggest and longest running sore suffered by photography is image blur. Photography began with it. Daguerre's 1838 photo of a Paris street scene shows a static shoeshine boy alone with his client. Where are the possible strollers and moving traffic? If any, they were blurred out of existence during the then necessary 10 minute exposure.

From The Keppler Files: April, 1988

Today's major question: Will autofocus SLRs completely replace non-AF SLRs? Answer: As surely as autoexposure SLRs replaced meterless SLRs. When? Give the process five years or so. From a dollar-and-cents point of view, the camera makers don't have any alternative. Since the AF Minolta Maxxum first appeared, AF SLR sales have beaten non-AF SLR sales silly. Camera makers aren't going to cater the whims of a manual-focus-audience if it doesn't exist. If you were a camera maker, you wouldn't either.