Good news, at last.
The battle between F1N and F3 is quite easy to resolve in favour of the Canon, on the other side.
Nearly all photography is a "put-on", with the possible exception of family snaps, and even then people wear their best faces. My wife receives a catalogue for women's clothes on a regular basis, and many of the pictures in it contain flare. I haven't seen a lens achieve/suffer from such lack of contrast for many a year, so I assume the photographer wants to evoke a mood, something it seems to do pretty effectively as parcels arrive from the company on a regular basis. A technical fundamentalist may see this as a flaw, but the photograph does what's required - sell clothes. Perhaps he uses a fogged and scratched up old Barnack, it's hard to say.
An Ansel Adams picture taken on a plate camera isn't objectively better than a Daido Moriyama taken on a pocket Ricoh, though it's certainly different. Was Adams less mannered with his artificially enhanced filters than Moriyama with his flash gun? Both deceive the viewer's eye to the reality of what was in front of them, both are very good printers, both have their own fans and buyers. A camera is a tool, no more, no less.
That's a tricky definition to make stick. There are all kinds of apparently pornographic imagery on gallery walls, that are not porn simply by the nature of their context. If it's a top shelf magazine, it's likely to be porn. If it's got a £35000 price tag and hangs in a gallery, it's most likely art, by the simple expediency that there are cheaper ways to get your kicks. Similarly, museums are in possession of priceless artefacts that may have been considered pornographic in the classical world, but are now priceless antiques, and therefore not porn.I forgot another legal delineation of what is and is not 'porn' - if it can be determined that the sole purpose of the image or text is to cause sexual arousal, and has no other aesthetic or educational value whatsoever.
I forgot another legal delineation of what is and is not 'porn' - if it can be determined that the sole purpose of the image or text is to cause sexual arousal, and has no other aesthetic or educational value whatsoever.
I'd say that Richardson's work meets that definition. It certainly has commercial value as a piece by itself, but so does Hustler.
As to the use of lens flare in the clothing catalog, well, that was obviously an artistic choice made by the photographer and/or the art director who felt that look would evoke a mood that would make people want to buy those clothes. For all we know, since the technical details were not provided, the photographer tweaked his lighting setup in such a way as to provoke flare in the scene despite using the latest, greatest multi-coated whiz-bang optics. Or she could have been shooting them with a Holga. We'll never know.
As a photographer, I would prefer to work with high-quality optics, reliable mechanics, and competent designs. IF I want lots of lens flare and I'm using a Canon or Nikon, I can always provoke it with the right lighting techniques. If I'm working with an Argus C3, I may get lens flare that can't be fixed (or light leaks if I'm using a Holga) when I DON'T want them. As a friend of mine once put it, "I can make a Hasselblad photo look like a Holga, but not the other way round". There are times when the Argus or Holga are the right tool for the job - their constraints and challenges may be what's needed to produce the body of work the photographer wants to produce. So in that sense, the Yashica T4 is just as "professional" a tool as a Canon EOS 1V, when used within its limits. But it isn't a tool I would use for day-in, day-out shooting because of those very limits. That's just my opinion, others will disagree.
Agree! (although i like my F3)
In the round "Who's the king of the 80s?" the only serious competitor of the F-1N is the Pentax LX IMO.
The Canon is a better system camera with better accessories (viewfinder and screens that modify the lightmeter mode) while the LX has a fantastic lightmeter (especially for night photography), it's small and light and as smooth as silk, while the F-1N is a little "agricultural" (the film advance lever, but I assume it's due to the fact the camera was meant to be used with a motordrive).
The King of the 70s...I don't know. I can't decide between the massive and powerful black line of the F-1 and the classic retro-futuristic design of the F2AS, surely we are talking about some of the best professional cameras ever made. I can also throw the Minolta XM in this Battle Royale-like fray.
Note that the Minolta XM (also known as XK) was designed some years later, so it has the advantage of newer design.
The advantage i'd guess the Canon has, is that it fits Canon FD lenses, and there are some very high performance lenses unique to that system (mainly the 55/1.2 aspheric and the 85/1.2 aspheric). But on the wideangle side Nikon has also some interesting lenses...
The sharpest 35mm prints I ever made were from an Olympus Zuiko 50mm 1.8. I think this may have had something to do with the silver rich, cadmium rich Agfa Portriga paper I used at the time. Without any contemporary comparisons in 35mm, that lens has gone down in my personal photographic pantheon as a marvel, though I suspect most glass would have looked good on that paper, with Agfa warm tone developer.
That's a tricky definition to make stick. There are all kinds of apparently pornographic imagery on gallery walls, that are not porn simply by the nature of their context. If it's a top shelf magazine, it's likely to be porn. If it's got a £35000 price tag and hangs in a gallery, it's most likely art, by the simple expediency that there are cheaper ways to get your kicks. Similarly, museums are in possession of priceless artefacts that may have been considered pornographic in the classical world, but are now priceless antiques, and therefore not porn.
How does one decide what is not educational? Terry Richardson was being provocative, and therefore educating the general public in the commercial forces that manipulate them. FWIW, I'm not a fan of Richardson or his work, but one does not need to admire an artist to consider their work worthwhile.
They are both very fine cameras, how good they are depends on who is using them.
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