Speaking Frankly

From The Keppler Files: November, 1995

So my advice to you is: don't flit from one camera system to another just because it may be slightly ahead technically at the moment. As sure as the day will dawn tomorrow, the manufacturer of your present system, if its cameras or lenses are behind the cutting edge of technology, will attempt to leapfrog technically over the others -- and again the SLR grass will look greener where you aren't. And being at the forefront of technology isn't always as exhilarating as it's cracked up to be either. My older cameras, sneered at slightly by my friends, have some features that the newer ones don't. And familiarity with what I do have breeds contentment.

Inside Straight: Rating Game

Why and how photographers went crazy testing lenses.

In 1946, Army Sergeant Harry Martin (yes, our Harry, who runs the Checkrated program and writes Time Exposure each month), stationed then in occupied Japan, bought four cartons of cigarettes from the PX for a buck apiece. At Shinko, an outdoor market in Yokohama selling cameras, he traded the cigarettes for a new Canon S 35mm rangefinder camera with 50mm f/3.5 Nikkor lens.

Although many Japanese products, including cameras, seemed attractive, most of the American public was convinced  that anything made in Japan was junk worth no more than a handful of cigarettes. So, it's not surprising that, in 1950, American photojournalist David Douglas Duncan ignored the coaxing of fellow photojournalist Jun Miki to try Miki's 85mm f/2 Nikkor lens. Miki gave up, but, using the lens, snapped a low-light candid of Duncan. The next day, Miki presented an 8x10 black-and-white enlargement of it to the unsuspecting American, who was in Tokyo on assignment to photograph Japanese artwork.

From The Keppler Files: July, 1967

Purists who insist on the separate, super-accurate, hand-held meter are in for it. Through-lens metering systems are here to stay, yea grow, yea multiply and probably finally knock the separate hand-held meter out of the box for keeps -- eventually, but not now.

From The Keppler Files: November, 1964

When traveling abroad, don't pay subjects just because you've taken their picture. Start giving out coins and watch the scene come to a standstill while the line to receive money forms on the right. Should you ever pay strangers abroad for posing? Certainly. When you ask them to pose. Then they are performing a service and should be paid as a model would be.

From The Keppler Files: September, 1990

The history of photography is strewn with disgruntled camera owners who were furious at every advance or change. Factory-coated glass film plates instead of coating your own? That's really taking the craftsmanship out of photography!

Many photographers were infuriated at the new feature of a rapid-return mirror in 1954. "Why, that will cause camera vibration and shake. We will not have anything to do with it." "A built-in exposure meter (1960). It's not nearly as versatile as a handheld one. We'll have none of it." "Fie on autoexposure! Now you've really taken the creativity out of photography." And thus onward with great objection to built-in-flash, autoload and autowind, program exposure, and now autofocus.

Let's admit that every one of those advances -- and they are that -- were indeed accepted, enjoyed, and depended upon by the vast majority of SLR owners. Outraged conservatives can still buy cameras with mirror lockup, use any handheld meter they wish and set their SLRs manually, avoid built-in flash and operate an off-camera flash when needed -- and today they can manually focus nearly every autofocus SLR if they so desire.

(I must note, however, that some of the most vociferous anti-auto pros I know have thanked their lucky stars for the whole auto-everything, kit and caboodle, in situations such as hanging by one hand from a yardarm 60 feet above the deck of a sailing ship in a rolling sea.)

Inside Straight: Battery Blues

A condensed history of the coming chaos.

"Haven't you forgotten a little something?" the dealer asked me three years ago. I had become so entranced by the tiny Konica Minolta DiMAGE X50 point-and-shoot digital camera I had just bought (and still use today), that I had completely ignored the box of connecting cords and software CD.

"You won't get very far without this," he said, extracting a charger, a power cord so thick it looked like a hawser suitable for berthing a seagoing vessel, and finally the little sliver of a NP-700 rechargeable Li-ion battery. Good grief.