Book Number Two Has Arrived.

Wham.  Opened my e-mail folder this morning and had a raft of e-mails (a gaggle?) either congratulating me on the arrival of the second book or yelling at me because I hadn't informed my friends that it was coming today.  I didn't know either.  I was working with April 1st as a delivery date.  

I headed to Amazon and there it was:  "In Stock". 

You can find it here: Kirk's Second Book.

If you live in Austin, Texas you can probably find a copy at the world's greatest camera store: Precision Camera and Video.  They try to keep all the cool photo books in stock, just in case.....

The book looks great.  I'm so happy to be working with professional designers and editors because they always make me look a couple dozen IQ points smarter and keep me from trying to put five or six different type styles on a page.....

If you are not a photographer don't bother buying the book.  You'll just get bored.  If you are a photographer or know one, are married to one, raising one, etc. you might want to grab them a copy as it will provide one person's version of lighting (described with good humor) and will keep my 13 year old in track shoes......

This is my second one to see the light of day and I enjoy the process more and more.  In many ways it's like being asked to dump all the stuff I've learned in the past 25 years onto a pile on the ground and then arrange it in a meaningful way.  Problem is there's way too much stuff crammed in the brain and not nearly enough room in 128 pages to parse it.  

That being the case, each book acts as an installment and it is through the graces of my publisher, Amherst Media, that it is somewhat organized and coherent.  But there are many volumes to go.  This is the second installment of five planned books.  

Look, we're all friends here so if you find something in the book that needs to be fixed, or something that you think I need to cover more, drop me a line at Kirktuck@kirktuck.com and let's talk about it.  It might make for a great future blog.

If you buy the book I hope you really like it.  If you buy it in Austin say "hello" to the folks at Precision Camera and Video for me.  If you buy it at Amazon I'll always appreciate a nice review.  If you hate the book you are probably too busy to review it so I'll understand. :-)

Thank you to everyone who helped out, posed, suggested, nagged or otherwise made this possible.  Next blog will be back to my usual cynical self.

Kirk

A Long Sunday Non-Rant.

   My favorite street shooting combo.  D300+35mm 1.8

The tool and the intention.  Why do I like some cameras and why do others leave me cold?  It's because good images come when the camera becomes invisible and you can concentrate on reacting to whatever is in front of you.  My latest nomination for the best street shooting tool? That would be a Nikon D300 with the new 35mm 1.8 (here's Nikon's official info...) scrunched on to the front.  Why?  If you've read my previous blog about 50mm lenses  you know that the angle of view on this lens has immediate appeal to me.  With 8 elements in 6 groups, and one aspheric element, the resolution and contrast should be just right.  But the real reason I like the combo is that it works well together as a small, light package.  The D300 is overshadowed by the D700 and D3 but is a great imaging machine in it's own right with fast focus, great metering and a really good imaging sensor.  I bought my lens from Precision Camera here in Austin for around $209.

The primary reason I gravitate to the D300 over the D700 for my own personal use has more to do with the overall feel of the cameras.  The smaller shutter and mirror in the D300 means the camera is quieter in operation with a very sweet shutter sound.  The 700 has a more abrasive mirror snap and a harsher shutter run sound.  It's like the old hi-fi analogy of "tubes versus transistors".  

The lower physical profile of the d300 with the 35 mm 1.8, along with the noticeably quieter sonic profile makes for a less intrusive candid shooting tool.  The D300/35mm 1.8 is absolutely the most ergonomic digital camera I've shot with so far.  And at $1,000 less than it's full frame cousin.

This is not intended as a criticism of the D700.  I love that camera in commercial shoots because of its low noise and because of its full frame sensor.  It's just not my first choice for personal art.

The runner up camera in this race to put together features, handling and quality have to go to one of my all time favorites, the Sony R1.  First, let me tell you everything that's wrong with it: The electronic viewfinder could be lots better (but it works).  The raw file processing time could be much faster (but it barely works).  The autofocus could be much quicker when shooting indoors.  But none of this really matters to me because the camera is so much fun to shoot with.

You may not have noticed but a lot of people like point and shoot cameras because of the ease of composition they get with the live view screen on the back of the camera.  Well, the Sony R1 has a really nice live LCD that can be viewed from a number of different angles, including flat on the top of the camera just like a waist level finder.  

Couple that with two other vital features and you've got a camera to be reckoned with:  An aps sized sensor (same size as the sensor in the Nikon DX cameras) that shares alot of attributes with the very sharp and very well regarded sensor in the Nikon D2xs.  A real, Carl Zeiss zoom lens that is sharp, contrasty and sharp.

When the R1 first came out people didn't know how to classify it.  The $1900 purchase price and the slow focusing drove off many people for whom this camera would have been perfect! After a while Sony did a rambling discontinuation that was official in some countries and unacknowledged in other countries and then, eventually, the R1 was remaindered in the U.S. market for somewhere around $600.  Since it's zoom lens goes from 24 to 120 (35mm equivalents) and the 24 has very little distortion, I use it as my primary architecture shooting rig and it has passed the critical inspection of several very savvy art directors.

If you see one of these used you might want to pick one up.  They are still highly competitive for many uses such as studio still life, landscape and other slow moving genres.  Here's what they say about it at DPReview:  Sony R1 Review at DP

And here's what Michael Reichmann says about it at Luminous-Landscape.com:  LL Review

Now,  on to my traditional Sunday Rant:  "The Cream of the Crap".  I read this quote in an article about the pleasures of still shooting film.  The whole idea is that the film shooter goes into battle with a plan and conserves his resources (which include not only film but also creative energy) and chooses his targets with forethought and discretion while the digital shooter rushes in a napalms several square miles (hundreds of digital frames) then searches through the ruble to see what he was able to bring down.  

I loved the line but I'm not sure I totally agree with the premise.  I think brilliant artists need to constantly experiment and make lots of mistakes to come up their share of good stuff.  Kierkegaard believed that genius and creativity were much like farming in that fields needed to be rotated in order to yield good crops.  And that's what creative experimentation is all about. Be like my friend, Keith.  Choose your targets.  Shoot till you know you've got the shot and then stop.  He's the first guy I've seen with a D3 who can actually shot 10 shots instead of 200 and know when to stop!

(short rant over.  now on to real Art!)

Do you really like good photography?  Really?  Then you must see Wyatt McSpadden's book, Texas Barbecue.  Two reasons why:  Wyatt is a master of natural light and his portraits and images are astoundingly good.  Really astounding.  Secondly,  his work is not that crappy, precious "cutting edge" manipulated crap you see everywhere else.  He's the real deal.  He's not trying to sell you on a style or a new set of Nikon flashes.  He's not flinging around his credentials (but has em if you need em....).  He's just one of the smartest, best shooting photographers who's work I've ever seen.  See it here at Amazon:  Wyatt's Incredible Book!

Here's Wyatt's website:  BBQ Rocks!

Finally, on the subject of books.  If you have an interest in studio lighting and you haven't done a lot of it you might want to snag a copy of my new book:  Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Studio Photography.  If you need more info check my site:  kirk's site.  Thanks for reading.  Please invite photographers and other people you know who may be interested in our blog.  

Have a great week!  Kirk

Fifty Millimeters. The Glorious Optics of Yesterday.

Ben Tuck.  Post Swim.  Nikon 50mm 1.2 ais.

My first camera was a Canon QL17 which sported a reasonably good 40mm lens.  It was soon replaced by a Canon TX SLR camera with a Canon 50mm 1.8 lens that seemed to remain locked on the front of my camera for most of its usable life.

When I look through my current equipment I find that I have hoarded a large number of normal lenses including:  Nikon's manual focus 50mm 1.4 and 1.8 lenses, two manual focus Micro lenses (both 55mm),  Nikon's auto focus 50mm 1.4 and 1.8 lenses, a Leica 50mm Summicron and 50mm Summilux for the M cameras and assorted "normal" focal lengths for the Olympus E-1 and the ancient line of Olympus Pen "half frame" film cameras.  I won't even start to recount the number of normal lenses I have for medium format cameras.

All this begs the question, "why?"  Well, first of all, every one of the normal focal length lenses is a superior performer.  One stop down from wide open every single one of them starts to really shine when it comes to sharpness, contrast and intangibles.  Two stops down and they beat every zoom lens on the market.  (We can argue forever about the new top zooms from Nikon).  They sit beautifully on the cameras instead of sticking out like some Freudian flagpole. This enhances the cameras shooting profile and makes the whole ensemble less intimidating.

But all of this would be moot if the angle of view wasn't so compelling.  I love the angle of view that a normal lens gives you.  Shot correctly it can seem wide or narrow.  Shot close at near wide open apertures the 50mm can give you incredibly shallow depth of field as in my shot of Ben.  But the real bottom line is that this is a focal length that matches my residual vision. Meaning that if I distilled everything else out of a shot this is what would be left.  

Those of you who are amateur mental health care professionals will probably wonder what motivates me to own so many different iterations of the 50mm.  Clinically, you might just go with exaggerated fear of loss but in reality I think it's the idea of being like a painter and having multiple brushes, each of which provides a different and distinguishable nuance to the canvas. The 50 1.2 Nikon does shallow depth of field with a sharp "core" better than anything out there.

The 50mm MF 1.8 Nikon does great sharpness across the entire geometry of a full frame better than any of its brethren (except for a few macros), while the Summilux does exquisitely sharp center with soft, happy, mellow edges better than anything else.  Couple that with a little rangefinder focusing and you've got and incredible package.  I bought the normal autofocus lenses around the time when the only cameras you could get from Nikon and Fuji were cropped frames with smaller viewfinders which impeded the focusing of fast manual lenses and I hold on to them because I find the Nikon D300 and the FujiFilm S5 Pro to be really spectacular cameras for different uses.

And, of course the obvious advantage of the fast 50's is their light gathering capability.  A sharp fast lens wide open can be two stop faster than the best zooms.  That equals two full shutter speeds of hand-holdability and action stopping!  Just like having VR in every lens.

The sweetest thing of all for a Nikon shooter like myself (edit: now a Canon shooter!!!)(newer edit: now a Sony photographer)  is that the current generation of Nikon digital cameras, like the D3, D3x, D700 and D300 actually make corrections for the short coming of the lenses attached to them.  I have found the 50mm 1.2 to be much improved in its performance with these four cameras.  The other lenses seem sharper and contrastier as well. One of my favorite new combinations is the old Nikon F4s (film camera) with the new Nikon 60mm Micro AFS.  The lens is impressive on digital cameras and even more impressive on the old film camera.  The combination drives me to shoot more film just so I can marvel at how well it all works together.

Even though I have lots and lot of 50's and related focal lengths I would say that my total financial investment is less than $2,000 or about the price of one 14-24mm Nikon Zoom lens. If great wide angle work is your interest you really only have one compelling choice.  I don't see that way and I'm thrilled to be able to match my optic to my vision of the moment.  I'm just about to buy the new Nikon 50 1.4  AFS just for its center core sharpness.  Stay tuned and I'll get a nice review of its performance together.

Finally, a friend really liked a quote I threw out on his discussion site the other day.  I want to share it with you:

"There is no real magic in photography, just the sloppy intersection of physics and art."

Kirk Tuck,  March 2009

Please help me spread the word about this blog.  I'd really like to open the dialogue to as many people as we can.

See more work:   Kirk Tuck's Commercial Website/An adventure in iWeb

Best, Kirk

Short Term Bleak. Long term unknowable.

I have some friends who claim to have lost half their money in the collapse of the stock market. I try in vain to remind them that it's just paper losses until they actually sell off the stocks and take the loss.  We've heard much about the "lost decade" in Japan and I worry that we're about to have our own period of loss but in a different way.  While the Japanese were paralyzed by their inability to move spending and wealth building ahead we are losing the idea that the arts matter.  That Art matters.  That there is more to life than profit and loss.  We are abandoning the liberal arts in an ultimately failed attempt to monetize every facet of our lives.

I've been in the photography business in one way or another for nearly thirty years.  I've run a freelance photography business for over twenty years.  And I've lived through four or five nasty recessions.  But I've never seen the overwhelming fear mongering and terror that this downturn has brought.  A day doesn't go by that a colleague doesn't call to ask if I want to buy some of their equipment.  To ask if things are slow for me too.  To ask if I've seen any glimmers of hope. All I can tell them is that the markets have always seemed cyclical to me and that perhaps in a handful of months, at the most a year, all this will pass and life will go on.

And down deep I believe it.  I believe that so much of what's gone wrong with the economic machine is just abstraction.  The profits didn't exist so the losses can't exist.  I know it is naive but I think we should stop right where we are and reset the whole machine just the way we would reset a laptop computer.  Whatever you have right now is what you start over with.  No one gets bailed out but everyone gets three square meals a day and shelter.  I don't want to bail out billionaires but I don't want to be callous to the victims who have no resources.

The most important thing photographers can do in this time is to get out of their studios and keep working.  "What? Work without clients?"  Absolutely.  Work to stay engaged.  Work to provide a continuing discipline of eye/hand coordination, but most importantly work to create the new body of work that will push you into the next upcycle with a fresh vision and a fresh offering.

I included a photo of Austin's Barton Springs Pool as a testimony to longevity and endurance. The city has grown up all around the pool and yet it still flows down to the Colorado River every minute of every hour of every day.  Our resolve and vision should be like that stream.  When confronted by a boulder we'll never have the sheer power to move it aside but we can keep our fluid agility and sweep around the boulder and by doing so continue our journey uninterrupted.

I understand today that the photography I did for corporations before the fourth quarter of last year will never return in the same way just as the water in streams is never the same water as that which passed the day before.  And, as in a science fiction movie, I understand that my commercial survival hinges upon a hyper accelerated evolution into new markets and new ways of selling.  But all the things I hold dear; swimming in clear, clean water,  helping Ben with his homework, listening to beautiful music, being loved and loving people are not contingent on my financial success or the return of the traditional photo business.  I am a person first and a photographer second and as long as I don't confuse what I do for who I am I will be happy.

Examine the roots of your happiness and understand that everything comes with two opposing forces.  Lack of business means more free time.  Free time means, potentially, more time to do the art you always wanted to do.  Life is weird and we only get to do it once.  If we focus on the stock market we invite our own pain.  If we focus on a beautiful subject we are rewarded with a connection to beauty and a connection to art.  What price to put on that?

Go Fly a Kite.

This is a photograph of me flying a kite at the Zilker Park Kite Festival in Austin, Texas.  ©2009 Ben Tuck.

The last week seemed to be a train wreck as far as the economy goes.  I sat at my desk trying to knock out more copy for my book on lighting equipment while keeping a window open on my desktop for Google News.

I watched the Dow spaz down a couple hundred points.  I heard "experts" predict the collapse of civilization as we know it, precipitated by the the decline and fall of the American Empire.  And then it dawned on me.  I had fallen into the trap of reading about life instead of living it.  I was listening to experts who developed their expertise in the "bricks and mortar" days.  They understood manufacturing and traditional demand models but something became clear to me.  The experts really don't understand the post 1999 economy any better than the man in the street and probably not nearly as well as the under thirty year old in the streets.

What do I mean?  Well, in the last downturn back in 2001-02 we all waited for the computer manufacturers like Dell and HP to rescue the economy by building and innovating our way out. But it didn't happen that way.  It was the ascendency of Google and Amazon and Ebay that rode in like white knights to get things moving again.  Business models that weren't truly understood by traditional investors were instrumental in building the new economy's momentun.

Now all traditional eyes are on GM and Chrystler and Dell, Inc. but the analysts are missing it again.  It's the Twitters and Facebooks and  some new technologies that I haven't even heard of yet (but which are well known to a younger generation) that are already laying the foundation for two things:  An increasing global interconnection and future prosperity.  YouTube didn't exist in 2002 but it may be more important than cable TV right now.  The intersection of computing and entertainment programming is almost complete.  Everything will change and the people who understand the new paradigm will benefit in the short term.

What does this have to do with photography?  Well, here it is in a nutshell:  The emerging market for images is young and totally wired.  My son spends more time with his iPod Touch than he does watching TV or cruising the web on his laptop.  His information comes from a loosely gathered network of "Touch Available" media that includes news feeds, online games, constant e-mails and more.  He's never going to be a traditional newspaper customer.  He's never going to follow network prime time television.  He's skewing the market for advertising messages more and more to the web.

So, we traditional photographers have been chasing more and more megapixels in our cameras with the rationalization that astute customers can surely see and value the improvement.  No.  It's not true because it's not relevant.  We're busy asking the wrong questions.  There's a new trend and it's all about speed and audience relevance and we traditional photographers may be on the wrong side of the equation.  Like traditional economists in an untraditional economy.

   ©2009 Ben Tuck.  Kirk Tuck with Kite.

The trend is diffusion into the market with as few barriers as possible.  It's not nearly as important to deliver the highest degree of technical complexity as it is to have images totally informed by the media in which they will exist.  And tailored for the intended audience.

Newspapers are dying off like plague victims.  The photographers who are suddenly set adrift have many choices including trying to find another newspaper at which to work or shifting their focus to a new target market.  They might find it easier to find new markets for their images than finding new continuous employment.  In my field, corporate photography, clients have gone into deep freeze. I could look for new market sectors in which to try and duplicate my past successes or I can look for new markets for my skills.

As the photography markets fragment I know I'll have to do more diverse kinds of photography and I will have to monetize my other skills sets.  As my friends know, I am hard at work on a fourth book and two previously written books will hit the market this year.  But that's not enough to offset the loss of income from corporate imaging.  I will also figure out how to market my marketing skills to aid smaller companies by providing a full production service to them.  I will need to teach workshops and have already contracted to do so this summer.  Finally, I'll take a chance on the Fine Arts market this year.

The hard part is trying to service each of these individual business units while keeping my vision uniform and fun.  But as long as I proceed an organic way, one business idea supporting the others rather than in opposition to each other, I think I'll be fine.  What won't work is trying to go back to the way things were.  Clients don't want a return to the uncertainty of the film days nor do they want to go back to a pricing model that they just don't understand.  Going forward, that will be photographers' biggest challenge.  How to align our financial needs with the position of clients who seem to have all the advantages.

The answer is in service, delivery, image differentiation and being able to rationally explain the value proposition of original imagery.  I've been reading Beckwith's book, Selling the Invisible, and I think I get it.  We need to deliver what our clients need without regard to "state of the art", "best in class" or "cutting edge".  We need to make sure that the value proposition to the client is clear.  Here's an example.  Given enough time I can light a board room until it looks like a showpiece from Architectural Digest and, given enough time with a CEO I can move a shoot to the point where I get exactly the expression and body language I want.  With an unlimited budget and total access I can create the ultimate portrait (or at least I think I can) but, the reality of the marketplace is that my clients are generally not looking for the the kind of investment of time or money that was spent producing the shot of the Queen of England by Annie Leibovitz.

They'll have fixed budgets that might allow for a half day of lighting and prep followed by 20 to 30 minutes of their CEO's time.  Their question is not what I can do with unlimited resources but what I'll be able to reliably deliver with time and budget constraints.  That's the message we need to deliver to our clients:  We understand the difference between delivering a very good portrait and a perfect portrait.  Or product shot.  Or event coverage.

Okay, so what does all this have to do with kite flying on a Sunday afternoon?  Just that the world that currently surrounds me is not in disarray.  The sky is not currently falling in my zip code.  The sky is clear and blue.  Hundreds of families were out flying spectacular kites in a sixty degree, ten mile an hour breeze.  I do have work in front of me and money in the bank.  No matter how special "old school" economist think this particular recession is I know it will pass. In fact I think the economy will turn around by June and that all these scary unemployment numbers are trailing edge indicators of a recession that is almost over.

Flying a kite is all about hope and possibilities.  And faith.  Faith that your kite will find the right wind.  That your string won't become tangled.  That gravity will not defeat you today.  It's the same as running a business.  Keep your string untangled and your eyes on the kite and you'll have success.  Just being out with your kite is a success.

Final note:  Ben is taking a photography class at school.  We went out today to play with kites and cameras.  He took some great photos of dogs and kites.  He's taking photography in little bites.  He still thinks it is fun.

    ©2009 Ben Tuck.  Bulldog at Zilker Park, Austin.

Sunday Rants and Rabid Opinions.

Don't know what it is about Sundays but all the bloggers and columnist seem to set this day aside for their pet rants about stuff that bothers them.  I thought I was immune but I spent to much time on Flickr today and now I'm in full rant mode.   Let's start at the top.  You'd think that back lighting and rim lighting had just been invented.  The lighting effect is like the iPod of the first decade, post 2000.  Unless you spend a lot of time out in the sun, facing the sun and talking to someone standing between you and the sun you don't see this effect very often in real life.  But if you look at the endless photo streams (mostly of scantily clad young woman) you'd think the sun sets continually, right over the little wannabe vixens' head and right into your camera lens.  In a word this lighting effect is like the word, "dude".  It is so overused that only "lame" neophytes still use it on purpose.  I'm calling for a world wide ban on gratuitous rim lighting!  And over the top hair lights.

Second.  I know David Hobby put his finger right on the pulse of photography in 2007 when his blog, Strobist.com, identified the style of using small, battery operated lights in lieu of bigger "plug in the wall" lights to do many routine photos.  His blog is really great and it's helped many a photographer gain a degree of competence they otherwise would not have had.  My book, Minimalist Lighting:  Professional Techniques on Location certainly benefitted from the the surge of popularity but, enough is enough!  Not every photo needs a flash in mandatory attendance.  Not every photo benefits from "just a little bit of fill",  "just a little bit of rim lighting...."  In fact, half the images I see on the Flickr photostreams would benefit from a lot less lighting and more attention being paid to the light God already conjured up for the taking.

By the same token,  not every scene can be lit only with the little dinky light poppers.  On a fast paced commercial shoot you'd go nuts waiting for the little darlings to recycle.  Especially if your set and client calls for the high production quality of low ISO's and smaller f-stops.  If you expect a shoot to progress at a good pace, provide enough juice to slam out f 11 several hundred times, etc. you'll want something that plugs in the wall and goes, "pop, pop, pop" without overheating or giving you variable exposures.  OMG, there might actually be a reason why all those pros use big heavy equipment-------beyond the cool logos on the product!!!

It's one of those "right tool for the right job" things.  Like using a truck to haul a bunch of cinder blocks instead of the back seat of your Prius......  Like bringing a bigger gun to a knife fight.  Or some silly metaphor meant to illustrate the advantages of correct gear choice.

While I'm ranting about equipment I'm going to throw this one into the mix:  Everyone who is not working for clients who routinely use images in large, glossy print publications or displays and who is constantly buying new and improved digital cameras is being played for a chump.  Before you spend another cent on new cameras do this experiment:  Take 20,000 of your images from the last 10 years of digital shooting, shove them all into Lightroom and start looking at them on a 30 inch, calibrated monitor.  Here's what I found:  Cameras improved relentlessly until they hit six megapixels around 2002.  At that point any improvement of the images used at under 8x10 @ 300 dpi is invisible.  My Nikon D100,  D1X and Kodak DCS 760, when used at their base ISO's are equal to any Canon or Nikon camera currently on the market.

I can't argue for a second that the newer cameras are not much better at higher ISO's than the ones I've listed but from a professional point of view I find the high ISO performance meaningless in most of the applications where we make most of our money.  Your mileage may vary according to your specialty.  For a studio portrait photographer I can count on my fingers the number of times I've needed to turn off the studio lights, put down the external light meter and use ISO 3200.  Just doesn't happen.  

And there is no real link between price and quality.  Not anymore.  I find the quality of the files from my Sony R1's equal to the files of the D700 at the native ISO's of each camera.  But more importantly is how well they print.  Most stuff looks interesting on the screen but the real test is how it handles paper.  And vice versa.  Wanna improve your digital photography?  Use a tripod.  Use the optimum apertures of your prime lenses.  Work on finding more interesting subject matter.  But exhaust all other avenues before you feel like you need to pony up for the new uber camera.

Final rant:  If you are a runner have you ever really wanted to run on a bright sunny afternoon and you headed to a hiking trail in your city to burn some energy only to be confronted by hordes of amateur trail users who walk with strollers in groups that span the whole pathway?  What the hell is wrong with these people.  When they drive in their cars they are required to drive up one side of the road and down the other.  Why do they become so mentally challenged when confronted with a hiking trails.  Let's get some traffic control people out there ticketing these idiots so that people who want to run can do so in appropriate traffic patterns.  Darn, that is so aggravating.

My Two Favorite Digital Cameras of All Time.

There's cameras and then there's cameras.  I've got plenty of the first kind.  They're "state of the art" pieces of industrial efficiency.  Cameras like the Nikon D300 and the D700.  I've owned most of the Nikon professional series bodies, starting with the D1, continuing through the D2x.  But along the way I've found that there's a difference between a camera with good specifications and reliable performance, and a camera that's fun to hold and fun to use.  I like the files I get from the Fuji S5 but for some reason it's just no fun to use.  Same with the Canon G10.  I really want to like it but it's more like a nice radio than a good camera.

So why do good cameras fail the warm and cuddly test?  The D700 is a much less inviting camera to use than the almost identical D300.  It's bigger shutter is much louder and has a flat, robotic sound.  The D300 has a shutter sound that's like a gradual growl.  It sounds more intuitive.  I know that seems crazy but that's the best way to describe it.  The Fuji S5 seems physically disconnected from the user.  I push the button and something happens but I don't know when or how.  It's like driving by wire.  Or those lenses on the early Olympus cameras and the original Canon 85mm 1.2 L lens that translated the movement of a turn of the focus ring into an electrical signal that made a motor move the focusing elements.  It hesitated and then overshot.  Both the D700 and the D3 feel reliable and accurate but very soulless compared to previous Nikons.

What makes a camera fun?  It's has personality.  It should have a few quirks that make it interesting.  And it should make you a better photographer.  In much the way that a Leica rangefinder became a transparent conduit for images while my Contax RTS camera felt like an unbalanced hammer in my hand.  Here are two of my favorite digital cameras of all time:

First,  the Kodak DCS 760.  It's a big goofy thing that endears itself to the user by it's protective "older brother" feel.  You know it's going to work.  You know the metering will be solid.  You know the autofocus will be quick in a way that the new generation of cameras is not.  It feels right in any size hand.  The finder is so good you'll tear up when you look through it.  But mostly there is an emotional reaction to a camera the bridges the best of the digital age with the nostalgia of the film age.  The DCS 760 has crappy performance at any ISO above 125.  Some would say above 80......  Don't ever think about using it for a long exposure.  Nightmare pixel fireworks.  But in the hand with a 180mm at an outdoor swim meet.  Heaven.  Absolute heaven. No wonder that they become harder and harder to find and hold their value better than the other cameras that came out in the same time frame.

The ulitmate way to enjoy a DCS 760?  Tethered to a big monitor on a computer running the Kodak tethering software.  It's so great.  And the software was so good.  Nikon has just now caught up.  Barely.

The second camera?  From around 2003.  The Olympus E1.  Wow, I wish the files were wonderful because the camera is addictive.  Small, agile and sensitive.  Small and well integrated controls.  The most deliciously quiet mirror and shutter mechanism ever put into an SLR.  I've pulled it out of the drawer and started using it again in the hopes that Capture One will turn the so-so ISO 400 raw files into gems.  But really, this is the camera body design and implementation that everyone should have rushed to copy.  It sublimates the "computer-ness of shooting with a digital camera and makes it as transparent to shoot as a Leica.  An added and back handed compliment to the camera:  The tiny, horrible screen on the back keeps you from chimping which helps keep the mind on what's happening in front of the camera.........

The E-1 is quiet, understated and gives you access to some really cool lenses, including some made by Leica.  The camera is weather sealed and very robust.  I like to equip mine with the LiPo battery pack because it adds a bigger grip and a second shutter release button.  Not to mention giving me thousands of shots before recharging.

These are two of my all time digital faves.  You can always pick one up cheap.  Beware the Kodak batteries.  Better to use that big beast with an external battery pack or plugged right into the wall!!!