“…photographs (for most of us) are iconographs. In other words, they are only symbols that collectively represent and remind us of our loved ones and our experiences. They don’t need to be sharp on a screen or technically perfect, they only need to be clear in our minds and emotionally meaningful.”
–
Yet, I routinely fret about the nuances between CCD and CMOS sensors and I’ve even entertained selling all of my lenses for the 50mm APO Summicron.
Have I forgotten what’s important in photography? In life?
I believe I know the answer to that.
It’s a never-ending-madness.
How do you, gentle readers, deal with said madness?
—Peter.
Prosophos 
I pull out my iPhone, take some snaps, and keep asking myself why is this so easy. Then I bang my head against the wall four times, pull out my M9 and start sweating as I attempt focus the 35 Lux wide open in the same dim light. A sure cure for madness 🙂
LOL !!!
Each of us have our own definition on the emotional content subject. We know deep down inside when an image captures our emotion. Normally has nothing to do with equipment used nor the “image quality”.
However, how do we as the operator of the device used to capture that emotion actually make that happen? For me the device does matter. If I’m not comfortable or confident in the gear I have in my hands then I don’t think I can create that emotional content I’m striving for.
I do know that the rangefinder experience has helped me in getting closer than anything other camera I’ve owned an shot with in trying to make that emotional content. As to CCD/CMOS discussion I know that I’d have an easier time using the rangefinder body with either of those sensors inside vice any other body type.
Now your next question about 50APO. Well that just comes down to what signature you want to create in making that “emotional content”. Leica doesn’t make a bad lens. They just all act a little different from each other and one must shoot with that lens a lot to know what you can do with it.
I shot with the 35 Lux pre-ASPH for almost a year. I love the Mandler signature and I learned quickly that shooting wide open at f1.4 would not always create what I was after (prone to flare and soft). I found myself shooting it at f2.0 most of the time. Then there is the minimum focusing distance issue. It was an issue for me as it was impossible to focus on my love as she sat across the table from me (she would always be too close).
So I bit the bullet and “upgraded” to the 35 Lux ASPH. (pre-FLE). This lens solved all those other issues. I now have no excuses and full confidence when handling my equipment as it doesn’t get in the way as I do my best to create those special moments in life.
PS: A quote I recently came across, “Buy the best, cry once.”
For what it’s worth, I really enjoyed your 35 Lux pre-ASPH images Duane. If getting the 35 Lux ASPH (pre-FLE) gets you closer (literally and figuratively) to where you want to be, then I wish you the best — truly.
I’ve had some things happen over the past 6 months. One of those involved my health (which is all good and certainly improving!) but also financially. We moved my eldest daughter from a local high school into a private school mid way through.
So as part of being “financial ready” for that I sold my MM a 24mm Elmar and 50mm Lux. It was all put towards my daughters education minus the Mamiya 7 and lenses purchase so I could still enjoy photography!
So this topic/point you have raised Peter has been on my mind and just how I might react over a duration time with all of these options open to us, knowing for the short term it is off limits.
After 6 months I’m happy to say I have a cursory interest in some of these wonderful pieces of equipment, though have seemed to ween myself off the constant following, thoughts and “want” for anything really in the equipment sense. Don’t get me wrong…I would love to own an MM or M9/ME and 50 Lux. Though it equally now sits well with me now that I don’t!
I had a conversation with a photographer, Jesse Marlow who works as a staff photographer for a large newspaper here in Australia. He is provided a D800e and lenses for work. He occasionally uses them for personal work and over the past 5 years has used mostly:
Konica Hexar
M6 with old 35mm lens (Cron or Elmarit I think)
Mamiya 7 with 80mm
He is a world class street photographer.
In the conversation it was his view that as good as a digital Leica is that he asked me if $12,000 worth of equipment was worth it? The answer is it is worth it if you are willing to pay for it…..and that is perfectly fine! For me though I’ve learn’t to not worry about things now (albeit forced for the moment) and the GAS is well and truly under control. One day Id love to buy a digital rangefinder again (i.e. Leica) with a 50 Lux….but for the time being it’s all good.
Glad to know you are doing better Andy!
The truth about Leica M vs. Medium Format gear (which I used extensively this year) is that the MF output is superior in many ways. Yet, the Leica gear costs more.
However, as Duane states above, the M gear allows me to capture the emotional content more often.
Certainly, for me, that is worth a premium.
I agree!
The 35mm format is really a better way to observe and record moments more easily (mobility, size, variety of lenses, etc) in my opinion.
Most of the pictures I treasure most were taken on my iPhone. It’s always in my pocket. Yes, I notice the poor dynamic range, poor metering, and so on. But some great moments have been captured and I will treasure the images.
I also acknowledge that for my more deliberate (I dare not say ‘serious’) photography, GAS is a part of the hobby. I like reading about and then trying different equipment. Sometimes that teaches me something about photography. Sometimes it’s just GAS and there is no way around it.
I am considering this as a New Year’s resolution:
No new camera equipment in 2015. Instead I will keep a little journal of what I might have bought if I’d allowed myself. Then see what I think of the entries later. Then, at the end of 2015, look at what I used least, or decided I didn’t like, and allow myself one week to make changes. Then repeat for 2016. I’m not sure if I will do this – I know it will be hard.
The exception? I will continue to spend some pocket money on photography books, education. Film and printing costs are exempt too!
Well I wish you luck with your plan Linden. I keep coming back to the CCD sensors in the M-E/M9 and M8, so I might as well stick with them this year.
It is madness isn’t it, I have know idea why I have a expensive camera and lenses I just do.
Hello Peter,
long time lurker, first time commentator here. Firstly, I really appreciate your family photography, the “small” but in reality essential moments, and your personal take on “living life through photography”. It is one of the most whorthwhile photographic topics I can imagine and you do it so well. Even when it comes to purchases of photobooks I am increasingly interested in family photography. One lovely example of such a book is Yoshihiko Ueda’s book “At Home”.
Regarding your blog post , please excuse a very subjective and simplified rant.
In my opinion
– most photography I see online, in books and in exhibitions is shallow and uninteresting, even if not so for the photographer,
– most photography discussions online seem to concern the easy topics of technology and methodology, not the more difficult topics of quality of content and/or ideas,
– technical “perfection” is confused with technical quality and even more so with what I would like to call photographic quality (here meaning the combination of ambition, idea and execution),
– photographic art is often confused with photographic craft (I’m only noting this, not putting one above the other),
– love of gear, and fondling with gear, is used as an excuse by many for not being able to or not being really interested in acheiving output in terms of photographic quality as described above.
Yes I am frustratingly guilty of most of the above. No I am of course not one to tell any one in particular why or how they should pursue their photography. Photography is and should be fun, but good photography is extremely difficult, deeming from what I see in both my own and others’ output. Gear is important and part of the fun, but often turns the focus away from content which is ultimately the deciding factor for the succes of an image, at least for the viewer even if not for the “device operator”.
I have way more cameras and lenses than I need or can use to its full potential. Which is why, in my quest to simplify, I often take heart in and advice from this blog post by Daniel Milnor:
http://www.smogranch.com/2014/03/18/i-like-old/
His take in summary:
Get a camera, commit to it and put all the rest away.
Most importantly, use your chosen camera until it wears out.
All the best/Mattias
I wouldn’t call your astute observations a “rant” Mattias… if it is a rant, however, count me in! There’s a lot of truth in your commentary.
I have tried to stay away from the various photography fora, for example, precisely for the reasons you cite above. Occasionally I fear I am isolating myself, so I will intermittently tune in. But then I’m disappointed all over again…
Peter
I can say with no doubt that the most productive manner to handle this madness is simply to wallow in it and let it consume you fully. Works for me. Resistance is futile.
Ha! Spoken like the true little devil on my shoulder.
Sometimes we just want to play and forget about everything. We should not feel guilty about this. Just play like nobody is watching and enjoy our times. As long as we can afford it.
Bert
Oh, I can play like nobody is watching. The trouble is, many people are!
I do not see the trouble Peter, just the challenge 🙂
It’s the sake of life. If you feel it you know you’re gonna do it now or later, so why not now?
Typically, I understood this question a little differently (perhaps wrongly) than many other commenters (lots of really good ones). I understood the question to involve the dichotomy prevalent in all forms of art, between technical accuracy, call it thingness, and spiritual or emotional, sometimes even intellectual, content. Should a cow look like a real cow or like what you feel about cows?
This has long been a topic of poetry, often discussed as a process of “naming”.
I think photography is particularly challenging in this regard, because choices are limited. Your variables are no where near as open as with painting, for example. You can change equipment to achieve a different technical effect, or scramble the image some in post processing to approach a pre determined conception, but mostly it’s where you stand, what you leave out, and when you press the shutter. I don’t have an answer, and certainly my own skills fall more nearly in the “neither” category, but I’ll leave you with some thoughts from Robert Lowell in what is (for him) a very atypical rumination from 1977 entitled “Epilogue”:
Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme –
Why are they no help to me now
I want to make
Something imagined, not recalled?
I hear the noise of my own voice:
The painter’s vision is not a lens,
It trembles to caress the light.
But sometimes everything I write
With the threadbare art of my eye
Seems a snapshot,
Lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,
Elevated from life,
Yet paralyzed by fact.
All’s misalliance.
Yet why not say what happened?
Pray for the grace and accuracy
Vermeer gave to the sun’s illumination
Stealing like the tide across a map
To his girl solid with yearning.
We are poor passing facts,
Warned by that to give
Each figure in the photograph
His living name.
(The Vermeer he references is “Officer and Laughing Girl”, ca. 1657. )
Peter,
I saw something and I thought of you… Here is the pdf brochure:
http://www.phaseone.com/en/GlobalMenu/~/media/7DD8E49987C94A748D67B31A84E750EC.ashx
60 or even 80 megapixels full frame CCD sensor….
My goodness… I was starting to tense up thinking I’d need to seriously look at this until I realized it’s out of my budget by a factor of 10!
Also, the lenses are a little slow for the sort of hand-held, low light work I do (but perfectly good for Medium Format landscape work).
Would I love to try one anyway? You bet!
You are absolutely right, I got so excited looking at it that I missed the fact that the lenses are too slow for your type of photography… But it looks gorgeous and I could see you shooting with it. Size-wise I am not sure how big it is, but it says 2 kilos so I guess it must be on the big and heavy size…
The cost… Well, when I dream I forget about money…
Best wishes for the Christmas Peter, to you and your beautiful family.
K.
I find that taking the odd shot with my Polaroid SX-70 generally puts things back into perspective.
It may have been a technological marvel in its day but now, especially when loaded with the somewhat experimental Impossible film, it’s really a bit crap.
The thing is though – the results, in all their blurred, blown and smeared glory are sometimes astonishing. Every so often, something haunts one of the photographs… and this rarely happens with hi-resolution photographs, film or digital.
It’s funny Chris, but I couldn’t agree more…it is the fleeting memory of the moment, however imperfect.
-M.
Well, no problem with the lenses… The problem is only with the budget factor.
Warning, very, very dangerous link: http://www.alpa.ch/en/microsites/alpa_12_fps.html
I still don’t really understand why you need a car or futile things like food or clothes… Devil Devil 🙂
Seriously Peter, I ask myself the same question every year (even more often, to be honest). We are lucky.
I wish you a merry christmas to you and your family
Matteo
My philosophy?
Shoot with what you have, shoot with what you love, and shoot with what inspires you…but most importantly…just shoot!
It doesn’t always cure the gear itch, but it takes away the focus somewhat…
-Mark
You posed the question: Have I forgotten what is important in photography and life?
Well, have you? From your self-presentation in your blog, I would vote no.
You titled this blog post with image quality vs emotional content. I do not think that image quality vs emotional content is a “pure” tautology. One can have both, one of the two, or neither. The view of the photographer might be entirely different from the viewer of the image. From a viewer’s perspective the images you post suggest that both are not only possible but probable with skill and devotion.
If your images are disappointing you, you should examine why. It may be an equipment issue (not the most likely…especially in your talented hands). It may be that technology can not (and might never) capture your imagination (more likely). It might be a variety of other factors. It might be a moving target or an ongoing restlessness. It might be that the process of seeking, changing, and moving forward is what propels you. You might worry that this “seeking” is a source of madness. it doesn’t have to be. It could be your particular source of inspiration.
Italo Calvino. “The Adventures of a Photographer” (contained in an astutely titled collection of stories titled….perfectly….. Difficult Loves). It could be read as a cautionary tale but also one that resonates on many levels.
You asked what we (the dear readers) do. My answer will be alarming to you.
I look at your images and know that all is possible AND that exploration is also valuable. Your talent is inarguable and your images are powerful, sweet, and masterful. Yup. Image quality and emotional quality. Whether or not that is “enough” or even defined at a moment in time is for you to explore. You generously and honestly share your explorations. I appreciate and learn from this, too.
You don’t have to “quest” to get what you are seeking…..but perhaps it is the quest itself that is most valuable to you.
Making a declaration to my family that my new year’s resolution was to use one camera and one lens for a year worked for me! ;o)
Don’t ask what the camera and lens can do for you, ask what you can do with the available camera and lens…
Well, that’s not entirely true, I simply enjoy photography with any gear I could have on hand.
Hey Peter, your work with the Noctilux was so good, did you sell it?
Thanks. Yes I did…
I’m surprised by that, it really seemed like a perfect fit.
I am certainly a proponent for maximum image quality. I don’t think it replaces emotional content at all, but since your photos are already filled with emotion and content you have nothing to worry about. 🙂 IMO, maximum image quality is not just icing on the cake but an important visual dialogue and a photographers duty to chase it. Those who can’t recognise it, still see it and usually with a gasp, and ohhh or an ahhhh. In terms of the never ending madness, I think the apo-summicron may indeed bring and end to such madness for a good long while.
David wrote:
“IMO, maximum image quality is not just icing on the cake but an important visual dialogue and a photographers duty to chase it.”
Hmmm… I’m taken aback by your statement. Not because I disagree — quite the opposite: I just realized I subconsciously must believe this to be true. Why else do I continually strive to improve image quality?
Thank you for articulating this David.
—Peter.
As for the 50 APO, I don’t currently have the resources to obtain this lens — not unless I sell some of my other lenses. I’m not prepared to do that right now.
—Peter.
Glad to hear that Peter, you have also helped me realise a couple of subconscious things too – It’s nice to read an intelligent and human point of view. I think image quality is a subconscious thing for everyone, until they learn, if ever, to see what they are looking at. That is a very interesting vehicle of expression in its self, to me. I remember when I first found photography and discovered the work of Irving Penn – there was a certain magic I could feel but couldn’t describe about his work that I later learned was, in part, IQ from 10×8 and 11×14 film and impeccable technique and lighting. He could bring inanimate objects, rubbish he found from parks and streets to life and gave them a sense of soul. They somehow look better than real life. Of course his work goes beyond IQ but that really sparked a fascination in me and how it works as a silent, provocative, conversation of sorts, and I really believe it to be an important part of, and a power of photography.
Happy New Year.