I Can See it For You Wholesale

Please forgive that horrible photograph. It’s a product of two powerful competing impulses: On the one hand, it seems stupid to write about a product without picturing it, and on the other hand, I’m at a point in my life where I simply refuse to put effort into to stupid gear photos.

Needless to say, there are plenty of reviews online that provide very nice pictures of the camera, as well as (almost) all the technical information you could require.

So, as to the camera, why do I have it, and what do I have to say about it that isn’t just summarizing dpreview?

Well, for starters, I should explain why I bought a new (used) digital camera. As you may know, I started on digital, but switched to film almost completely. I’m a still a hardcore film convert (and as any student of religion knows, converts are the ones who are always most strident), and I have some very nice, very portable film cameras, including the semi-pocketable Olympus XA.

But, a few different factors conspired to make me desire a compact digital camera:

• Sometimes I’m in social situations where a photograph is called for, but I don’t feel like expending precious film
• Sometimes I want a photograph of something for a blog post, but I don’t feel like expending precious film
• Sometimes I want a photograph of something to put online the same day (but don’t feel like busting out a big camera and polaroid back)

In the past, those factors never overcame my hatred for some of the ubiquitous features of digital compacts, like:

• Autofocus
• No usable MF option
• No scale focus option
• Often absurdly impossible UI
• Shitty image quality

In discussions about these problems, folks have often brought up Ricoh’s GR Digital cameras, which I previously ignored, because they’re so damnably expensive. However, I happened to take a look one day at both the focus and exposure options on the GR Digital II and it’s price on the used market, which is comparatively pretty reasonable.

So, after a bit more research and digging, I ordered one.

Now, I won’t go into what it looks like or its specifications, etc., because you can get that information in more detail elsewhere very easily. What I will address is the question that typically most interests me about digital compacts, the question which virtually no reviews of those compacts ever actually addresses:

Can the camera be used for LCD-free, scale focus street shooting, the way I would use a film compact?

Street photography isn’t the only or even necessarily the primary thing I want this camera for, but I strongly feel that this sort of scenario is one in which every small format camera should be able to offer at least acceptable usability. Obviously the camera market as a whole disagrees with me; but is Ricoh the exception?

Yes and no. Or, rather, yes, with some annoying caveats.

On the yes side:

• Yes, you can turn off the LCD and all noises
• Yes, there is what amounts to a hyperfocal setting
• Yes, there is an electronic DOF scale for effective manual prefocusing
• Yes, the camera can be made to record a photograph near-instantaneously
• Yes, it has aperture priority and manual exposure modes
• Yes, there are aperture and shutter speed controls under your finger and thumb where they should be
• Yes, the camera has a hot shoe and can reliably sync a corded flash at (so far as I can tell) speeds up to about 1/1000 or so

On the annoying caveat side:

• The camera does not appear to meter continuously in aperture priority mode; i.e., if you skip straight to a shutter release full press without a half-press first — which you should be able to do when working sans autofocus — you will often get seriously inaccurate exposures
• Also, the camera does not have enough dynamic range to allow you to be sloppy in your exposures
• This makes it impossible to abandon the LCD completely, because one cannot simply trust the camera to accurately expose for you
• While there is a mode which allows you to view settings on the LCD but skip the live view (good), that mode does not display the settings continuously; you have to twiddle a control to make the settings appear.
• It tends to crap out around ISO 400 in the “noise acceptability department.”
• Despite having a fixed lens, it does not have a built-in viewfinder, and while accessory finders are available, they are wickedly expensive. (As are many finders made for film cameras that cover a similar FOV, so I don’t mean to imply that Ricoh is trying to shaft the user on this front; wide angle finders simply aren’t cheap.)

There are also some annoyances that aren’t really design complaints, but which frustrate me nonetheless. The delay in writing RAW files to the card, and the unnecessarily large size of those files, are particularly chafing. You would think that a camera with so many incredibly intelligent design choices targeted at an unusually sensible (in terms of photographic practices) market segment would favor less pixel density.

I’m also finding it difficult going, getting the hang of working with those files. So far, I’ve only managed to get results I like by going black and white, for example. However, hopefully that will improve as I get more practice with the camera.

But, at the end of the day, will I be using it?

The answer is yes, or at least probably. There simply aren’t that many digital cameras that allow me to easily — by simply twitching a preset — go from ideal settings for daylight hyperfocal street shooting to ideal settings for shooting with a handheld flash. Not even my D40 — although that camera’s beautifully simple interface when paired with a non-metering lens remains the envy of most digital cameras, as far as I am concerned.

It’s too bad that I can’t use the GRDII like the digital equivalent of an XA — which, with its extremely reliable metering system and simple operation, is one of the most stress-free cameras imaginable in most situations.

But at the same time, I’m not exactly averse to busting out my handheld meter and getting old school. Doing so gets me the ability to more or less reliably pre-set exposure, and I have an adequate (although not perfect) eye for the 28mm-equivalent field of view. In other words, it’s a workable solution, even if it is not the ideal one.

Of course, if only someone would release a camera like a digital equivalent of the Rollei 35 — with external, top-viewable dials for exposure settings and a built-in VF — I would be a completely happy camper. But since that’s not going to happen, the GRD is probably going to be good enough…

In the process of writing this short post for 1/125 I did a quick self-google to verify my suspicion that I had already posted about this same interview.

As it turns out, I did, but on an old, now-defunct personal blog that I had mostly forgotten about. I won’t shame myself by linking to it here. I only mention it at all, because I notice that I was already thinking, in 2007, about the problem of creativity in photography, and my intuitions then are pretty congruent with my conclusions now — which is interesting, because on a whole lot of photography-related topics, me in 2007 was a completely different person from me in 2010.

I don’t think of photography as a creative art (I don’t generally stage pictures or engineer situations for taking them), but more as an analytic craft, like non-fiction writing; it is more a matter of peeling away what does not belong than of putting in what does…. I’m probably being influenced right now by some of the thinking I’ve been doing about photography and non-fiction writing. Excluding the form of photography where you build stuff just to take pictures of it, neither is a “creative art” in the sense of causing or even pretending to cause something “new” to be. The point is not to create the newest thing but to make as clear as possible (not necessarily as accurate; that’s another, more loaded issue) a description of something that already exists.

In fact, I might go so far as to say this perception/determination regarding the non-creative nature of photography may be the closest thing to a unifying theme (Minor White’s “thin red line” — no, because it is not unique to me) that extends from almost the beginning of when I started to use a camera with intent to the present.

Note: This is mostly a quick type-up of my pencil notes from earlier today, so please forgive any misspellings and feel free to skim, since I’m not going to edit a ton.

I just got back from the traveling New Topographics show that just pitched its tent at SFMOMA. I was excited to see it, because I’ve been reading Britt Salvesen’s book as well as falling head over heels for Frank Gohlke.

My first impression? Underwhelmed.

I don’t want to say the show isn’t worth seeing. It’s a very important part of the recent history of photography, and some of the photographs in it are extremely compelling as well. However, I was not particularly impressed with the way the actual show was put together.

Probably the biggest objection is that there is a mix of original prints (or at least prints that belong to the period of the show) and prints that were made in the last few years. The new prints are, in many cases, of a different size, a different quality (usually technically superior), and often show a different approach in the printing process — and choices in the printing process can and often do have a real impact on how the viewer sees the photograph. I found the mix and match approach jarring and confusing, and this is a case where some interpretive apparatus really should have been provided — particularly regarding print size, but also regarding contrast, etc.

I also found it annoying (although not surprising) that it felt like the Bechers got the most attention and care. The Bechers, while maybe my least favorite part of NT, tend to play really well with the art museum crowd. Some of the other photographers really got the short stick in terms of how wall space was divvied up. (My museum pet peeve of mounting photographs below other photographs and way below eye height was out in force, and Joe Deal particularly suffered because of it.) Some of the rooms were also surprisingly poorly lit.

There was also a relative of dearth of supporting materials regarding the historical context from which NT emerged — which is a major missed opportunity. There’s a smattering of stuff about cultural landscape studies and historical precursors, but not enough.

All that being said, I’m very glad I saw the exhibit, and I will go back and see it again. The main value I derived from the experience was being able to correct some of my impressions of the photographs, which were previously based mainly on the reproductions in Salvesen’s book, which are fine for some of the photographers, but overcorrected and/or misleading for others. Lewis Baltz, in particular, was very poorly represented in the book.

Seeing the work in person also forced me to reconsider Nicholas Nixon’s NT work, which I had previously found totally uninteresting. I’m not sure that I can say that the book does not correctly reproduce the work — with the exception of the pronounced cold tone of the prints, which is absent from the books. However, something about their presentation framed and mounted on the wall (together perhaps with that cold tone) took away something of the postery quality I found so objectionable in those photographs. They are more critical, and more clinical, than I had originally realized, and I need do some more thinking and looking to decide where I stand relative to them.

Notes

Robert Adams — Softer contrast than NT book repro. Appears unremarkable. It’s a little surprising that people were able to see how important this work is, which is not to say that I don’t think it is that important.

Shore — 2009 reprints. Very clean. And huge. Only a couple are here, and mostly not the interesting ones.

Bechers — The reprints are slightly larger and technically much superior. I actually like some of them a lot more than Becher prints I’ve seen in the past (I’m seeing and noticing detail more easily, and that gives them a reality that often seems missing from their work, sacrificed to form and type), but they don’t seem to fit very well with the original prints or with the show overall. The Loree Breaker photograph (which I cannot seem to find online) is their standout, as far as I can tell.

Nicholas Nixon — Very cold tone. I like these far better in person. On the wall, they seem less like posters — oddly. They seem to be offering the city up for scrutiny rather than eulogizing it. They appear clinical. I wonder if part of the difference is the three-dimensionality of the frame and matting — they enhance my sense of distance. The lighting in the situation is very poor, unfortunately, really abysmal.

Schott — Either printed much darker than the repros in the book, or else these have majorly faded over time. I like it — it makes them seem less comic-kitsch, and more…what? Lament-y? Not exactly. But it tweaks the comedy-tragedy balance a smidge.

Baltz — You can tell these are 35mm. Very different from the book, which was clearly oversharpened, and overcorrected for contrast. The contrast is very hard, which gives the photos a more judgmental quality. Semicoa — very hard contrast, lost blacks, and a greater separation of midtones. Much more sinister and disconcerting. Airport Loop Drive — major lost shadow detail creates a bit of perspective illusion. Stark and trippy. R-ohm (?) — lost detail. Lots of it. The white square is all the eye can look at. McGaw Laboratories — very compelling — is that a screen below the door? East Wall, West Carpet Mills is awesome. Pertec (?) — seems much funnier in person. SE corner, Semicoa — the shadow of the tree is ghostly, ethereal. The light and shadow stuff here is just perfect.

Joe Deal — I didn’t know his stuff was 2 1/4; figured he was view camera. Don’t know why. A bunch of these are mounted below others, stupidly. I had to kneel down to get a reasonable perspective on them. In person, the sense of flatness is profound — the two dimensionality of the photographic medium is underscored.

Wessel — Almost exactly as in the book. Charmingly funny, etc., etc.

Gohlke — The contrast is softer in person; the overall feel is less judgmental, more…delicate? Less certain? Not the right words. Some are darker, more somber.

Companion Exhibit

SFMOMA paired the NT show with a companion exhibit from its collection, which is a major value add. It’s a somewhat mixed bag, but there’s some really great stuff in here. Much better overall, really.

Evans — some very interesting color polaroids. Heavy on the irony and detail, tiny. These would really kill in flickr if Evans were making them today.

Mark Ruwedel — this definitely bears further investigation. “Westward the Course of Empire” — railroads as American ruins (like, stonehenge-style) — very interesting, and almost like a cross between a New Topographer (Gohlke or Adams) and O’Sullivan, with maybe a hint of Atget.

Thomas Barrow — “Cancellations” — “…gouging directly into the negative, producing seamless prints from the defaced film.” This shit calls for an industrial strength eyeroll.

William Gedney — “Kentucky” — This is astonishingly compelling work. Made during two visits to a poor family decades apart. Really lovely, strong sense of…I don’t want to say compassion. Empathy? No. It feels like he was a guest in their house, rather than a social worker. So, I guess the word I was reaching for is respect. That’s part of what is so markedly missing in that Maisie Crow series that bugged me.

Joel Sternfeld — Refer this guy to Karl.

Berenice Abbott — I think the best way to describe the style of these photographs is that it’s like Atget took a step back and didn’t pause to regain his balance before releasing the shutter. (Yes, I know that metaphor is irrelevant with view cameras.)

Wright Morris — “Time Pieces…” WOW. How utterly rich in description these are…”Reflection in Oval Mirror…” — Best reflection in photography, ever. “Photograph of Morris Family homestead…” — Best re-photograph in photography, ever. “A crack in time had been made by the click of a shutter through which I could peer into a world that had vnished. This fact exceeded my grasp, but it excited my emotions…A simpler ritual of survival would be hard to imagine. By stopping time I hoped to suspend mortality.”