I was content with smile shutter technology until two weeks ago when I saw a glimpse of the horrible future this technology could unleash.

I was attending a weekend retreat and one of the other attendees had a Sony DSC-W220 digital camera. This camera has the smile shutter, and something much darker and perverse.

* Smile Correction *

You read that right. In a world where a professional photographer can get fired for digitally removing a background element, we can now decide that Uncle Joe doesn't look happy enough in that snapshot we just took, and fix it in-camera.

So how well does this feature work? We did some experimenting. First up is a photo of myself with my typical everyday face.

And then the same image after the camera applied smile correction.

The smile correction doesn't do that bad of a job actually. I just hope to hell that it never gets included as a feature which is enabled by default.

I think about the use of Advanced Photo System cameras during the 1990s. For years the APS format camera my mother owned vomited up wretched looking snapshots into my family's photo album. When I flip through our family album, the mid nineties is the period I consider to be the dark ages. There is a definite drop in the quality of the images from that period due to APS.

There is a lack of good quality prints (in my eyes) in our family albums from those years, but at least what we have is honest imagery. Sure there are a lot of forced fake smiles, but at least those fake smiles are formed by human face muscles. I personally don't like the forced smile photograph, but there is something comforting about seeing the exact same smile on the face of the same person in photographs spanning decades. Same for seeing similar characteristics appear on the faces of children and relatives from later generations. I have little faith that the algorithm in a $150 camera is going to be amazing enough to accurately render the nuances of each individual's smile.

While I was now trembling in fear as to the future of our family snapshots, I was also enthralled by this gimmick. Much like Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue in 1996, I was determined to give this computer a good old fashions man vs machine smack-down.

The Challenge: Could I produce a frown so deep that the camera couldn't realistically correct it?

Before

After

So who wins? Man or Machine? Give your thoughts in the comments area please.

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Traditional Techniques

The above still from Martin Scorsese's 1980 movie Raging Bull is a common depiction of how to hand hold a Speed Graphic camera. The photographer's left hand is under the strap while the right hand is on the shutter release button located at the back of flash handle.

The other common stance for using a Speed Graphic is as shown in this old US Signal Corp video. The photographer's right hand still releases the shutter except now the left hand is used as a platform to support the camera. Stable? Yes, but look how long it takes the guy to focus, stabilize, and then shoot. It isn't the most fluid method to using the camera.

For the press photographer of years past, these techniques have been tried and true. For crazy photographers such as myself who still like to walk around with large cameras while practicing street photography, I wanted something better for contemporary Speed Graphic photography.

The K. Praslowicz Ninja Speed Graphic Method

The press photographers of yore consumed a healthy amount of flash bulbs. To synchronize them with the shutter, many cameras used flash synchronizers attached the the flash handle. These synchronizers forced the use of the right hand to be the shutter release hand.

It is now 2010 and flashbulbs have long been replaced by electronic flashes which don't require the use of a synchronizer on the flash handle.  Realizing this one simple thing opened up a door for me which led to an evening of experimenting with how I held my Speed Graphic. To my surprise, I found a method which I feel makes using my Speed Graphic faster, while being more comfortable.

Turn that frown upside down.

By frown, I really mean the lens. The vintage press lenses I own for my speed graphic all have the same configuration. The cable release socket is on the top,  while the flash sync posts are on the bottom. What I've done with mine is remounted the lenses to the lens board upside down so that the cable release is now on the bottom, and the flash sync is now on the top. This allows me to work the cable release into a position where I can hold it in my left hand under the camera strap.  I can now pull the cable release like the trigger of a rifle.

Given the design of your lens and choice of cable release, rotating the lens may not be required. The important part here is just finding a way to comfortably get the cable release into your left hand.

This simple change greatly increases my reaction time when using my Speed Graphic. No longer am I required to bring my hand back to the shutter release if I need to make any setting changes on the camera.

Speed, and Mobility

Once my right hand was free of its shutter releasing duties, I quickly realized that it could be used to comfortably stabilize the camera during shooting. Instead of gripping the camera where the flash traditionally is located, I now curl it under the drop bed and grab the corner directly ahead of my left hand.

From this stance I can now easily pull the camera so that it locks tight into my right shoulder making it very stable. If you have ever shot a rifle before, this stance should feel very familiar. While being very stable, I can still easily move my torso to aim the camera at any subject which isn't directly in front of me.

If you are reading this and own a Speed Graphic, go pick it up and trying holding it hold it like this. Tell me what you think in the comments area below.

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The Man with the Phallic Camera - Yashica Mat 124G - Fuji 400H

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However, someone who didn't fail at the July 4th thing is Aline Smithson. Go check out the First Annual Lenscratch 4th of July Exhibition that she put together on the Lenscratch blog.

It is a very strong and diverse collection of photographs from around the country. Some of my personal favorites are the entries by Christy Karpinski, Siri Kaur, Ray Carofano, Mike Peters, Carmen Luceno and Jackie Alpers.

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Found via Photo Utopia

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Below freezing temperatures and shooting in the middle of snow storms puts me in my happy place. So to help mentally break past the layer of sweat which is adhering my jeans to my leg, I decided to edit out a few fantastic* dark winter night photos from last winter.

*Photos not guaranteed to be fantastic

1. The Cooking Pit

Christmas Eve. A winter storm with heavy winds had set in. The rest of my family left our family's annual holiday get together to go attend church. I put my parka on, grabbed my RB67 and stepped into my own snow-covered church of worship.

During the gross summer months, this place used to be a large fire pit for community cooking events. Now it has been overtaken my the snow.

2. A Truck Among Trees

3. A Truck Behind a Pole

4. Remington Oil Co.

A small town gas station. The diesel pumps almost look like two robotic E.T.'s don't they?

5. A Defeated Snow Plow

Dammit. I still am feeling the heat.

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I purchased my Mamiya RB67 for the purpose of night photography on a tripod. However, the masochist in me got excited as soon as I hefted the camera up for the first time. I believe that many photographers would balk at the notion of attempting street photography hand-held with a six pound camera. I, on the other hand, couldn't wait to give it a try. The wrong tool for the job is often the most fun tool for the job.

Accessorize!

Before taking the RB67 onto the street, I believed that a few accessories would make the experience much more pleasant.

The first accessory was a neck strap. The RB67 is a heavy camera. I didn't even want to know what kind of hell I'd experience by attempting to carrying the camera around all day without some sort of support. I ended up getting a neoprene strap for the RB67 on eBay. It worked well at reducing the apparent weight of the camera while it slung from my neck.

The second is the Mamiya L-Grip for the camera. The L-grip benefits are three-fold.

1. It adds a nice handle to grip the camera with.
2. It gives the camera a second shutter release for the left hand which I feel is easier to trip.
3. It adds a cold shoe for flash use.

Combining the strap and the grip actually made using the camera hand-held very manageable. And, as an added bonus, it also made me feel like I was using the XM214 Minigun that Jesse Ventura had in the movie Predator. Remember how awesome that weapon was? Now you too can experience the thrill in photographic form with a Mamiya RB67! (Except for the rate of fire.)

Shooting the RB67 Hand-held

For the next few months after getting the the RB67 rig set up for hand-held use, I periodically took it out into the street for a few street photography sessions. Here is my list of pros and cons from those outings.

Con: It is big and heavy.

The longest photography session I had with the RB67 was at the 2010 John Beargrease sled dog marathon. For that session, I was on foot with the RB67 for a little over three hours. I had a lot of fun shooting with the RB67 that day. It was an outing that proved to me that the RB67 is feasible as a street photography camera. However, I don't believe I'd ever take it to an event where I'd like to do anything other than photograph. The bulky, heavy camera doesn't store very well anywhere but in my hands. It also doesn't easily rest on my hip or sling around to my back like I can do with a TLR or 35mm Rangefinder camera.

One of the street photographs taken with the Mamiya RB67 at the 2010 John Beargrease sled dog marathon. View the full gallery.

Pro: It is big and heavy.

It's not to say I can't find any good in its weight and size.

I'm a pretty big introvert. Rarely am I ever the one who starts up a conversation with strangers. The big-bad RB67's size drew in a lot of people and forced them to strike up conversations. I think I've handed out more of my cards while wielding the RB67 then I have while out with any other camera in previous years.

I've also been asked if I was a professional at the most frequent rate that I've ever been asked. This also is a good thing. If a photographer can project a sense that they are suppose to be doing what they are doing, it takes the edge off of those who notice. If flashing a big honking camera takes that edge off them for me by making them think I'm a professional—great! I can then expect less strange looks if I were to aim it at people.

Pro: Art with Exercise

After every shooting session with the RB67 I felt like I had just completed a cardio workout. Thus, the RB67 is a nice multitasking, exercise machine. I get to keep my body healthy and in shape, all while making art!

Con: Shutter Lag

Once the shutter is tripped on the RB67, the big SLR mirror needs to get out of the way before the exposure can be made. The time it takes for the mirror to move adds a bit of lag between when the shutter is released, and when the exposure is actually made. I didn't feel that the delay would be much of a problem when I was dry firing the camera, but actually using it on the street was a different story.

Even though the lag time is only a fraction of a second—it still feels like an eternity in comparison to the nearly instantaneous shutter response time which I'm used to from my Leica or Yashica Mat. If anything fast moving happens, I don't expect to capture the moment how it looked when I tripped the shutter. Take for example this photo of a dog. It was looking at me when I hit the button.

Con: Viewfinder Blackout

The second downside about the mirror having to move out of the way is that the viewfinder goes black. This played a psychological game with me that I couldn't seem to get my head around. Instinctively, I would associate the blacking out of the viewfinder with the exposure being made. What would then happen is I'd quickly start moving the camera prematurely thinking the exposure was already done, when in reality the shutter was finally just opening up. This led to a good percentage of images with very noticeable camera shake.

Conclusion

Street photography is a low percentage game. A lot of photographs have to be taken in order to get a few keepers, and a camera must always be with you to ensure you can capture the best unpredictable moments of life. While I absolutely love the way that technically sound negatives look, the cons get too much in the way of the street photography odds. Odds which are hard enough to succeed with as it is.

I've since taken to my Yashica Mat 124G for heavy medium format street photography use. The negatives might be a little smaller and not as nice, but once I consume the 100 rolls of 220 sized Fuji 400H I bought for it, I'll have an additional 400 photos to edit from. And since I can easily take the 124G with me everywhere, I can reasonably expect to be able to consume all that film in the near future. I'll probably still occasionally use the RB67 on the street when I feel like doing something different.

Until next time...

One last street sample from the RB67. Peace out.

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My seven year old niece must have overheard our conversation as a few moments later she asked me in an excited tone if I was really shooting color film.

I was a little bewildered as I didn't expect her to be familiar with my body of work, or photographic methodology to even get excited that I've been shooting a lot of color lately. I let her know that yes, I indeed was shooting color film at the parade. She processed the information for a moment and then asked then me the following question.

"Do you have any in purple?"

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Full list of prints being sold can be found at my clearance sale.

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I see two certainties involved with computing:

1. Hardware failure and data loss with happen at regular intervals.

2. I will always hate having to back up files. Thinking about backing up those backups as the backup media gets outdated makes me grimace.

I'm not being technophobic. I just prefer when things are simple. A future where the longevity of photographic archive requires me to keep up with the rapid turnover rate of computer hardware and software is not one I want.

I recall an experience where I heard a digital photographer talking about cutting edge, two thousand dollar RAID system he just put in place to keep his many thousands of digital photography files safe. My first thought was that the technology would be laughable in terms of storage capacity in five years time. We'll have a newer faster hard drive interface, and the discs will be able to spin at 200,000 more RPM. I image that he will be doing whole thing over again to keep up with the technology.

Meanwhile, here is all the backing up I've had to do over the past ten years.

With film, I can just file and forget. Each binder and a pack of one-hundred negative sleeves runs about $30 and will never be outdated technology. No software drivers are ever going to be unavailable which will leave them unreadable. In ten more years, I imagine that the only thing that will really change is how tall the stack of binders is. So simple it hurts.

You just wait till your house burns down!

While film storage is incredibly durable, I understand that it isn't indestructible. My grandfather's slides from the 1950s were not stored with much care, and as a result they've all been destroyed by fungus.

The other great threat towards my file and forget method of film archiving is of course a house fire. Luckily for us though, house fires aren't that common. I can't say that I even know a single person who has lost all of their possessions to a house fire. Yet, I've experienced hard drive failure many times in my life. The worst of which was a power surge back in 2001 which caused some of the internals on my motherboard and hard drive to explode. Literally.

Just as most oil painters wouldn't switch to a Wacam tablet and Photoshop to keep their work more immune to a fire, I'm not going to use it as a fear point for switching. Any digital photographer who isn't making off site backups is sitting in the same boat as use film photographers anyways.

Contingency Plan

I think I might add a small layer of fire protection though. I think a reasonable contingency plan would be to get a program such as SyncBackPro and have it monitor the folders that my scanned files get saved to. As I scan my negatives, the files would automatically be uploaded to my web server for backup. Then in the event of total negative loss due to a natural disaster, at least part of my archive will be retrievable as a second generation copy.

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