Sometimes it pays to be a pack rat

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

How often does the NY Times run a headline as big as today's? Well, I happen to have one of the previous instances.

Anyone know what the other two were?

Sometimes it pays to be a pack rat

Snow! In October! In New Jersey!

© 2008 by Mason Resnick
I shot these 20 minutes ago, right outside my front door, with a Canon 40D and 18-85mm lens. An unusually early snowstorm here in central New Jersey.

Snow! In October! In New Jersey!

Random NYC street shot #30

©2008 by Mason Resnick

Random NYC street shot #30

Random NYC street shot #29

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

Random NYC street shot #29

James Nachtwey raises awareness about TB through his photographs

Photojournalist James Natchwey is on a mission to spread the word about the threat of potential worldwide Tuberculosis pandemic. XDR-TB is a resistant mutant strain that is affecting millions throughout the world and threatens many more people, but it is preventable. This video consists of 37 black-and-white photos by Nachtwey and a call to action.

I've spoken before about the power of photography, but in this case, what could be more powerful than raising awareness that could lead to saving lives?

James Nachtwey raises awareness about TB through his photographs

Random NYC street shot #27

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

Random NYC street shot #27

Random NYC street shot #26

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

Random NYC street shot #26

Random NYC street shot #25

©2008 by Mason Resnick

Random NYC street shot #25

9/11: What was there

© 1983, 2008 by Mason Resnick
World Trade Center Observation Deck, 1983
© 1983, 2008 by Mason Resnick
World Trade Center lobby, 1983

A distant but vivid memory.

In honor of Jonathan Ielpi, FDNY Squad 288, the son of my former next-door neighbor on Long Island, who died a hero on this date in 2001 while saving lives in the World Trade Center.

9/11: What was there

More U.S. Open photos

© 2008 by Mason Resnick
© 2008 by Mason Resnick
© 2008 by Mason Resnick
© 2008 by Mason Resnick

More U.S. Open photos

U.S. Open 2008 #3

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

U.S. Open 2008 #3

U.S. Open 2008 #2

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

U.S. Open 2008 #2

U.S. Open 2008 #1

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

U.S. Open 2008 #1

Random NYC street shot #24

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

Random NYC street shot #24

Whatizit?

Remember Izzy the Whatizit? He (or it) was the ill-fated mascot of the summer Olympics games in Atlanta in 1996. The name (or actually, the question, whatizzit?) came to mind when I found the above photo on a German web site, photoscala.de. They found the images on a Chinese language site, DPnet.com.cn. Note the Micro Four Thirds and Panasonic logos on the camera. It apparently has interchangeable lenses, and maybe that means also an interchangeable optical viewfinder. Could this be the first of the Micro Four Thirds cameras--and might it be that non-Leica digital rangefinder I've been asking the Great Pumpkin for?

Here's my free-form interpretation of the Google-translation of the German:

"Anticipation has been running high since Olympus and Panasonic announced the Micro Four Thirds System. What, exactly, will the cameras look like? Does this system have a future? (Garbled translation...then...)

"This photo has added to the conjecture. We don't know if there will be an optical viewfinder, but in this photo it appears that there will simply be a rear LCD monitor. If this camera has an optical or very good electronic viewfinder, we want it. But we don't know if these pictures are leaked product shots, or simply photos of concept cameras. We'll know more when Photokina starts."

So...whatizit?

Whatizit?

Previously unpublished photo of Garry Winogrand at work

© 1976, 2008 by Mason Resnick

I recently came across this old photo of Garry Winogrand. I took this shot during a 2-week Master Workshop with Garry at the Germain School of Photography in August, 1976. Our classroom was the streets of lower Manhattan, and I took this shot of Garry on Broadway. While it many not be the most interesting photo visually speaking, it's reminded me of one aspect of Garry's working methods.

First, notice that he has no camera strap. He's simply holding the camera in his hand.

Second, look at his camera bag, which is covered with strips of white tape (see detail). These were labels, and every time he finished a roll he'd jot down basic info about the lighting conditions and ISO, then put the strip on the roll of film before dropping it into his bag. Later, he would refer to this information and adjust film processing to best fit the shooting conditions. You could call it pre-digital EXIF data.

Inside the camera bag was dozens of rolls of film, and a spare Leica M camera.

Previously unpublished photo of Garry Winogrand at work

Remembering Henri Cartier Bresson on his 100th Birthday

Today would have been Henri Cartier-Bresson's 100th birthday. I consider him, along with Garry Winogrand, Robert Frank, and Elliott Erwitt to be one of the most influential photographers in my life.

I was lucky enough to meet HCB, at the New York Museum of Modern Art, at the press opening for his show, The Early Years. He was standing in one of the galleries, wearing a windbreaker with his camera descretely mostly hidden. My friend and co-worker Peter Moore recognized him and pointed him out to me. We walked over and introduced ourselves. I thanked him for his beautiful work. He smiled politely bowed his head as we shook hands.

Then he quickly walked off into the next gallery. That was the entire meeting, but for me it was, to coin a phrase, a decisive moment!

Remembering Henri Cartier Bresson on his 100th Birthday

One day at Modern Photography in 1983...

Photo ©1983 by Robert Alexander

When Herbert Keppler passed away in January, I looked around but couldn't find this shot. It just surfaced and is still worth posting because of the story behind it. We staged this meeting at Modern Photography magazine as part as an effort to publicize the fact that we were making extraordinary efforts to clean up the mail order camera advertisers, many of whom in the early 80s were ripping off their customers with increased boldness. In the first year, we rejected over a million bucks worth of ads because the store owners wouldn't do simple things like deliver what people ordered at the advertised price. This was my first job, and I was hired by Burt Keppler (standing, in the center) to run a team of secret shoppers to help weed out the bad ads. The whole thing was Burt's idea, which is why I wanted to find this photo.

So here was the team, discussing how we would protect our readers from our unscrupulous advertisers, from left to right: yours truly (pretending to look corporate), Bob Kinney, Larry Wienstein, Burt Keppler, Rachel Segall, and Howard Shaw.

As I recall, some of us were having a bit of trouble keeping a straight face during this shoot, possibly because Howard was telling a dirty joke.

One day at Modern Photography in 1983...

Random NYC street shot #23

©2008 by Mason Resnick

Quick reminder: My online street photography class starts Sept. 12. Register today!

Random NYC street shot #23

Staten Island Ferry #2

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

Staten Island Ferry #2

Staten Island Ferry #1

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

Staten Island Ferry #1

Point Pleasant Beach, NJ #3

©2008 by Mason Resnick

Point Pleasant Beach, NJ #3

The time is right for a digital rangefinder that's not a Leica

My first rangefinder camera was not a Leica. It was a Rollei 35--a tiny 35mm camera with a 40mm lens that you had to zone-focus (in other words, guess) and guestimate exposure, since the meter was less accurate than my guesses. It was quiet and unobtrusive. Years later, I would add the Olympus XA4, the palm-sized, clamshel design camera with (bless 'em) a focusing tab, to my collection, and took some amazing shots with it. Once I could afford one, I bought a Leica M3 from Ken Hansen in New York, but those two little cameras carried me through until then.

The joy of these cameras is that they were in the $100-150 range, while even a used Leica with a lens would set me back around $600 (oh how times have changed!).

Now, in the digital age, there is the Leica M8, for $5,000, plus around $3,000 for a new lens. For street photographers and others who like to work with a small, inconspicuous lens and demand high performance (read: no lag time) and high quality (read: no golf-ball-sized digital grain at ISO 400), there is nothing available for less than that.

Sure, there are compromise cameras such as the Canon G9, Ricoh GRII, or the Sigma DP-1--they're small and offer some great features, but quality starts to suffer by ISO 400 (with the excepton of the Sigma), and there is lag time (notably in the Sigma). Or, you can go with a small-ish DSLR like the Olympus E-410, but it's still bigger than a compact and more noticeable--and you can't see what's going on when the mirror slaps up.

But there is no digital equivalent to the Olympus XA series or Rollei 35. There really should be for the sake of those starting out in street photography, and I am optimistic that there will be one soon. My optimism stems from this week's announcement of the Micro Four Thirds system, developed by Olympus (!) and Panasonic. The sensor will be the same size as an Olympus or Panasonic DSLR, but because the camera won't have a mirror prism, it can be designed "radically smaller and lighter" (to quote the press release). Could they mean Olympus XA-small? I hope so!

But if someone's going to produce a (presumably affordable) digital rangefinder, they should do it right:
• No lag time. Use a mechanical shutter.
• A focus tab that would override autofocus when you wanted to. The XA focus tab design is a fine precedent to follow.
• Aperture and shutter speed dials.
• An optical rangefinder. No EVFs!

Can they do it? Given the timing of the announcement, we may see the first generation of affordable digital rangefinders by the end of September, at Photokina. The technology is there. Here's hopin'.

The time is right for a digital rangefinder that's not a Leica

Point Pleasant Beach, NJ #2

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

Point Pleasant Beach, NJ #2

Point Pleasant Beach, NJ

© 2008 by Mason Resnick
Boardwalk, Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey.

Point Pleasant Beach, NJ

Random NYC street shot #22

©2008 by Mason Resnick

Random NYC street shot #22

Street photo class: Registration open now for September session!

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

My street photo class has been a great success--I am thrilled to see so many students evolve into street photographers who have developed a passion for this thing that I can't help doing.

I am pleased to announce that my next street photography class will begin on September 12 and registration is open now!

Go to The World at Street Level to see some of my students' work, and to the Perfect Picture School of Photography to register. I'll personally critique your work and help guide you as you learn to overcome shyness about photographing strangers and master the challenge of finding order in chaos on the streets.

I hope you'll join me!

Street photo class: Registration open now for September session!

Random NYC street shot #21

©2008 by Mason Resnick

Random NYC street shot #21

More Atlantic City shots!

©2008 by Mason Resnick
©2008 by Mason Resnick

More Atlantic City shots!

Random NYC street shot #20

©2008 by Mason Resnick
Shot with my trusty Leica M3.

Random NYC street shot #20

Exclusive! First photos taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3

Today Panasonic officially introduced its first meaningful entry into what I hereby dub the "Leica M wannabees" category, joining the Ricoh GR Digital and Sigma SD-1. Their common theme? They all have optical viewfinders that attach via the flash shoe, and all feel like cameras that were designed by designers who allowed familiarity to photography to win over out-of-control engineering.

But do any of these cameras do digitally what I can do with my trusty Leica M3? Well...not really. But they're fun to play with and certainly cost a lot less than an M8.

So, on to the LX3. Last Thursday, I had the opportunity to take the camera for an informal spin on a boat ride around Manhattan, courtesy of the kind folks at Panasonic. You can read the news item, with all the specs and stuff, here. And now--a Blog and White World exclusive...here's what happens when a bunch of sun-baked photography writers, editors, PR people and Japanese bigwigs on the top deck of a cruise boat are photographed by a street photographer who's been shooting since 1976...

©2008 by Mason Resnick
©2008 by Mason Resnick
©2008 by Mason Resnick
©2008 by Mason Resnick
©2008 by Mason Resnick
©2008 by Mason Resnick
©2008 by Mason Resnick
©2008 by Mason Resnick

A very short review

While the camera says it has a manual focus setting, you have to go into menus to find it and use on-screen controls, which means you have to take your eye away from what's going on in front of you. I focused on 3 meters and let hyperfocal distance do the rest. Shutter lag is pronounced in AF, much less so in manual focus. However, there was a brief pause, and I missed some moments. Image quality was excellent, even at ISO 400 when most compacts start showing unacceptable noise. That's due to the larger-than-usaual 10MP sensor, which allows for the individual pixels to be made larger and capture more light.

So while it's no Leica, for around a 10th of the price of an M8 the Panasonic LX3 has a lot to offer and will likely give its two other closest competitors a good run for their money.

Exclusive! First photos taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3

Random NYC street shot #19

© 2008 by Mason Resnick

Here's the final shot from my street test of the Ricoh Caplio GX100. The shutter, I must admit, reacted very fast, enabling me to get moments like this. One of the interesting features I tried out was the VF1 electronic vewifinder. It's interesting because it swivels from eye level to 90 degrees. I shot this with it set at about 45 degrees (hence the slightly lower POV) and it took quite a bit of getting used to. However, if you set the monitor live image view to just show the image without any information, you can see things pretty clearly.

Overall, I'd say this camera is a nice little camera, but because it requires relative manual settings (via button presses) rather than absolute settings (such as the focusing tab on a Leica M lens) and it has a high signal-noise ratio at higher ISOs, it falls short of the ideal digital street camera that I'm constantly looking for.

Random NYC street shot #19

Random NYC street shot #18

©2008 by Mason Resnick

Ricoh GX100 street test photo #3. After shooting a few dozen shots in auto-everything mode, I started using the camera's manual controls. Manual focus allowed me to shoot faster than AF, although the MF controls were not exact. Using the up/down buttons on the circular array of control buttons on the back of the camera allows you to focus in approximate increments. One press brings you from infinity down to 3 meters, then to 1 meter, then focuses in smaller increments down to 1cm. The longer you press, the more the focus changes, but it's not an exact science, and this was frustrating when shooting on the streets.

I ended up locking focus midway between 3 meters and 1 meter and let my rough estimate of the hyperfocal distance do the heavy lifting.

Random NYC street shot #18

Random NYC street shot #17

©2008 by Mason Resnick

Second of my Rcoh GX100 street test: I used Photoshop's adjust lighting > shadow contrast tool to lighten the shadow areas here, but despite the tricky lighting I think the Ricoh GX100's meter did a reasonable job. This is the last of my attempts to use the AF, which simply didn't react fast enough. The shutter does not lock up while focusing, which means shorter lag time but also means autofocusing is risky as it may not be done by the time your press the button all the way. Manual focus is better but takes some getting used to.

I also noticed that it takes a fairly light touch to trigger the shutter release--but there were times when I though I'd captured the shot but the shutter release never triggered. By the end of the day I was back to pressing the shutter release firmly.

I shot this at ISO 100, and while highlights look fine you can see a bit of grain in the shadow areas at full size.

Random NYC street shot #17