Where is everybody ?

[zobeleye]

Hi guys,

It's been a while. A bit confused now, since there's not much happening here anymore.
Are you all gone to another site and if so, could you direct me there ?

cheers and lots of beautiful light to everybody
Stephan

[Rob C]

Join the club…

Maybe people use the Internet differently now. Was a time I pretty much lived here, then the power of photography began to lessen in my life. I think that, obviously, the busy days here were largely powered by the thirst for information regarding the digital age. Coming to digital after a career in photography, and thus new to the changes, this was a great site where I found that good information was happily given to anyone who asked.

Today, age also makes itself an unwelcome factor; enthusiasm for photography depends, in some cases, upon outside factors such as location, availability of services, and when those are absent, one knows that the pursuit of once favourite genres is an endeavour doomed to abject failure. Other genres come up, now and again, but they are forced - not genuine children of love. The choice, then, becomes giving up altogether on visual pleasures such as making pictures, or just doing photographic stuff again when everything else in life seems to grind to temporary (one hopes) halts.

I can’t say that I ever looked upon this site as a “gear-centric” place. Sure, there were reviews, but the bulk of the interesting chatter seemed elsewhere in the forum. Importantly, one could meet photographers here who had professional reputations, too, and that - at least for me - brought about a special kind of bonding. Perhaps the greatest change of all was the demise of Michael, the site’s founder and spiritual head. He wrote well, when he wrote; had a good video presence and, above all, he was also a damned good photographer. You can’t find people like that in many Internet photography places. A leader needs charisma, and whether on a large site as this one was, or a tiny blog such as Leicaphilia always was (both lost their creators: Leicaphilia remains online as a rich resource of writing and images, supported by the man’s widow, but totally devoid of new input; LuLa seems rapidly headed in the same direction), the need for some kind of “director” is always there. How do you make up for things like that?

The site has also had to go through the traumas of ownership discord and, with that, partisan divisions amongst the readership. Such things breed disenchantment and, also, marketing begins to make people wonder whether or not they derive enough benefit from a place to put their money down. Different folks, different wallets and different priorities. As an enterprise, you end up with what you end up. Everything has an unavoidable sell-by date, just as has the readership itself.

[KLaban]

^
This.

[zobeleye]

Hey Rob,
thx for the elaborate answer. I feel the same way and do miss Michael too.
Well let's continue to visit here and help each other out in times of confusion and need, shall we?

cheers
Stephan

[Rhossydd]

I can’t say that I ever looked upon this site as a “gear-centric” place. Sure, there were reviews, but the bulk of the interesting chatter seemed elsewhere in the forum.

On the other hand it could be argued that Lula became huge as a result of Michael's technical reviews, especially starting with the D60 & 10D. Also the quality of technical discussion on emerging topics like colour management and RAW workflows.
He also had a gentle hand on moderation and kept the forums running well.

Digital photography has quickly matured in the last twenty years. When I first joined (D60 era) most photographers asking questions and discussing issues here were experienced with film. In turn that meant that much discussion was informed and erudite, plus there weren't as many resources to call on for detail. That made for good questions and interesting answers.
Now there are many sources for information and dealing with beginner's questions quickly becomes tedious for some of the old hands, so the forum seems a less welcoming place to visit.

Michael's untimely death left a big hole in the running and direction of the site.
Making the main site subscription based must have reduced readership and that in turn reduced engagement with the forum.
Years of very poor moderation seems to have effectively killed off the forum.

[aaronleitz]

Rob C's comments are right on the money. I don't think what has happened is unique to LULA. Virtually every online community/forum I have been involved with has followed roughly the same path. There is a fascinating series of articles written about social dynamics and the challenges of creating and maintaining a social community ("social software design"). This one has to do with the breakdown of such communities (The Evaporative Cooling Effect):

https://web.archive.org/web/20110221094204/http://blog.bumblebeelabs.com/social-software-sundays-2-the-evaporative-cooling-effect

[Rob C]

Well, the silence remains deafening.

This may just be the impression that I get because I read very few of the tech threads, mainly because I no longer print, and have as little interest in buying more equipment.

I suppose I had hoped for some material on the emotional, subjective meaning of photography to different people - some kind of conversation on the art of the thing, rather than the science. I guess I’m doomed to disappointment.

Seems there’s not a lot I can do about that.

P.S. Even the Bear Pit has been silent for two days…

[Rhossydd]

I had hoped for some material on the emotional, subjective meaning of photography to different people - some kind of conversation on the art of the thing,

Not here. That sort of discussion requires a lot of effort to write. Online it's difficult to convey an author's meaning and intention. It's too easy to misinterpret comments or be lost with cultural differences in use of language if discussing with an international audience.

[Rob C]

Yes, if you subscribe to the modern doctrine of total inclusiveness, then your point is good. However, in what I cling to as still being the so-called real world, it shouldn’t matter a damn if some people find it too onerous a task, can’t get their heads around the finer points of a discussion due to, perhaps, lack of dedicated interest or problems with language. I have faced the language problem for the past forty-four years here, in Spain, and my Spanish is good enough for me to know just how poor it is. That said, I accept my lowly linguistic station and none of the local old guys with whom I pass the time each morning celebrating the fact we are all - apparently - still alive, gives a hoot about that: they take me at my own level; we make a few jokes and I move on to the rest of my morning and they to theirs.

Why should it be any the less free here on LuLa? Surely, each can take from it what he or she likes and simply disregard the rest?

I’m not saying that you advocate that lowest common denominator dogma, but for those who might, “too bad” seems fair enough a stance to adopt.

[Chris Kern]

I suppose I had hoped for some material on the emotional, subjective meaning of photography to different people - some kind of conversation on the art of the thing, rather than the science. I guess I’m doomed to disappointment.

My impression is that when the art rather than the science of photography has come up in forum exchanges here, the subject usually has been how the science intersects with the art: what the photographer can accomplish with the technical features of the current hardware and software technology.

Although these days, with capabilities based on "artificial intelligence" rapidly infiltrating both the shooting experience (e.g., automated focus based on a menu-selected type of subject) and the post-processing methodology (e.g., generative tools that manipulate the image based on machine-learning rather than fiddling with the light captured by the camera), perhaps a more interesting discussion would be what a photographer should do with these tools.

Saint Ansel famously said: "You don't take a photograph; you make it."  Smart software has given new meaning to his dictum.  He also said: "Not everybody trusts paintings, but people believe photographs."  I suspect that one has been ... ahhh, as they say ... overtaken by events.

[Jonathan Cross]

Re Art and Science, attached is possible example.  Currently, in Chichester Cathedral in the UK is an installation of the planet Mars (attached). The installation is by the artist Luke Jerrams. It is made up using thousands of NASA images of the planet's surface and is 7m in diameter (~23ft).  It crosses several boundaries, the NASA images are for science reasons, the whole installation is educational and art (to me), and the venue is very imaginative.  Reaction to my photo, taken during an evening visit, has been 'whow'.  Chichester Cathedral is an appropriate venue as it is just over 150 years since the birth of the composer, Gustav Holst, who composed The Planets, and who is interred in the north transept.

Any thoughts, reactions?

Best wishes,

Jonathan

[Rob C]

Although these days, with capabilities based on "artificial intelligence" rapidly infiltrating both the shooting experience (e.g., automated focus based on a menu-selected type of subject) and the post-processing methodology (e.g., generative tools that manipulate the image based on machine-learning rather than fiddling with the light captured by the camera), perhaps a more interesting discussion would be what a photographer should do with these tools.

I think that the short answer is that where they can be, they should probably be switched off.

That's one of the problems I have with the iPhone: it is so damned clever that it is tending to remove my own input from at least the first half of the process, the capturing part. That ensures that there is a reasonable image to see, but not necessarily the one that I actually want to have. It means that for my Daidochromes, for example, I have to undo in Photoshop much of the hard work that those clever people in California did on my behalf. It would have been easier had the image been made with less "corrections": in many cases I want to lose shadows pretty much completely, but trying to use the exposure compensation method of pushing my finger down the screen isn't the way: it is very hard to see what's really happening, and slows everything down too much. Making the exposure itself is a bit of a dog, too: I have to hit that button on the screen, and never manage to do it gently. Thank goodness for image stabilization! I did try using the sound buttons on the side, but they turned out to be even worse.

Of course, this could mostly be caused by my own shortcomings: I cannot text using both set of fingers at once, like all the adults in the movies do and certainly all the real kids that I see; I need to use a stylus if there's to be any chance of writing what I intend. Even the use of my index finger alone is no guarantee of hitting the correct key. How anyone can use their thumb for that is beyond my comprehension. It's said there is a link between photography and music, and indeed there is. During the very short period when I attempted to learn to play a guitar, I experienced the precursor of the iPhone keyboard experience - my left fingers refused to hold down one string at a time, and I almost invariably fuzzed up two. Right now, if I press the soft pads of my fingertips, they stay compressed, as if there is not enough meat under the skin to fill them out to where they should be. So, rather than hit a key with a solid tip, I hit it with a kind of soft paddle. You see the difficulty?

Though I stopped using a real camera over a year ago when it became impossible, due to eye problems, the problems have been fixed, but the Nikon remains unused. I can't count the nights when I've set up the camera with a different lens, inserted a charged battery, and told myself that tomorrow morning was it! But, what happens is that the mental urge to pick it up, and actually go outdoors with the thing evaporates when the critical moment arrives. I think of the weight, that nuisance of a thing that has to be left, vulnerably, on the table, or hung from the back of the chair when I go for my morning coffee... all too much, not commensurate with the reward brought home. The iPhone, on the other hand... in a sense, it's worse: it fosters the terrible concept of "good enough"!

[Jonathan Cross]

Re iPhone. I am using it more and more. I am not into video much and if I do use it then HD is fine. The fact that it is always with me and easy to do means I find I am taking clips more. Re stills, I always shoot RAW, airdrop to my iMac and process as normal in LR. With super resolution and denoise available as well as the mask tool, I can get 18”x12” prints that surprise people when they are told an iPhone 12pro was used.

Being able to tap the screen to select a focus point makes close-ups easy and I can add a caption in the info window.

I even know later where I took the image, as a click on map in LR shows me.

As for texting and emails, both my wife and I dictate.

Always with me, it makes grabbing the moment easier and I can concentrate more on composition.

The new life!

Jonathan

[Chris Kern]

That's one of the problems I have with the iPhone: it is so damned clever that it is tending to remove my own input from at least the first half of the process, the capturing part. That ensures that there is a reasonable image to see, but not necessarily the one that I actually want to have. It means that for my Daidochromes, for example, I have to undo in Photoshop much of the hard work that those clever people in California did on my behalf. It would have been easier had the image been made with less "corrections" . . .

As far as I can determine, Apple has designed the default image-processing pipeline in the iPhone (and Google, similarly, on Android phones) for two purposes: (1) to produce those ubiquitous "selfies" of people smirking into the lens in front of interchangeable backgrounds and (2) to generate video clips so would-be "influencers" can get their clicks on TikTok or Instagram.

. . . the Nikon remains unused. I can't count the nights when I've set up the camera with a different lens, inserted a charged battery, and told myself that tomorrow morning was it! But, what happens is that the mental urge to pick it up, and actually go outdoors with the thing evaporates when the critical moment arrives. I think of the weight, that nuisance of a thing that has to be left, vulnerably, on the table, or hung from the back of the chair when I go for my morning coffee... all too much, not commensurate with the reward brought home. The iPhone, on the other hand... in a sense, it's worse: it fosters the terrible concept of "good enough"!

I'm also reluctant to lug around a heavy camera on the off-chance something interesting will catch my eye.  That's why I sold my full-frame Nikon D-800E and replaced it with a diminutive (well, that's how it seemed in comparison to the Nikon) mirrorless Fuji XT with a crop sensor.  In principle, I'd like to carry a camera all the time; in practice, unless I have something particular in mind that I want to shoot, it's a nuisance.

But there's light at the end of the sensor—because by happy coincidence these little cellphone gizmos can be used for serious photography.

Re stills, I always shoot RAW, airdrop to my iMac and process as normal in LR. With super resolution and denoise available as well as the mask tool, I can get 18”x12” prints . . .

Exactly.  And at least with some newer iPhones, you no longer need to install a third-party camera app to capture (more-or-less) raw sensor data: you can shoot what Apple calls ProRAW and produce a linear DNG file that has only been—by cellphone standards—slightly processed.

Of course, in the Apple universe the customer always needs guardrails to avoid sullying the company's reputation with an imperfect result, so this file format still combines multiple frames to generate high-dynamic range images, uses machine learning to produce "optimal" detail and noise reduction, automatically sets the white balance, and finally fiddles with the tone mapping to allow the HDR images to appear correctly on screens with less dynamic range than Apple's.  These modifications to the light captured by the sensor seem to be baked into the Apple-flavored "raw" file, but the linear DNG is indeed quite modifiable in Lightroom or Photoshop and you can usually get whatever result you want with minimal effort.

Even on the newer iPhones, I gather some third-party camera apps can still bypass all the Apple processing and emit a genuine raw file.  I haven't tried any of them lately, but when I did play around with a couple of them on an iPhone 11, I discovered the tiny sensor was so noisy that I was better off letting Apple work its intelligent processing to produce a rendered image.

Apple's slightly-cooked DNGs actually seem to be a very good compromise.  Loathe as I am to admit it, unless I zoom in 1:1, on a computer monitor I am hard-pressed to identify which pictures came from my iPhone and which from a full-frame Leica.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Apple's slightly-cooked DNGs actually seem to be a very good compromise.  Loathe as I am to admit it, unless I zoom in 1:1, on a computer monitor I am hard-pressed to identify which pictures came from my iPhone and which from a full-frame Leica.

True.

[William Walker]

How nice it is to see all (?) the old faces again on this one post, especially you  Rob!

[Rob C]

How nice it is to see all (?) the old faces again on this one post, especially you  Rob!

Well, thank you for that, William! LuLa - and photography as a whole - was my lifeline after my wife departed this world sixteen Novembers ago. It kept me from concentrating on immediate horrors, lack of discernible future happiness and that oh, so crushing weight of empty time on one’s hands.

I left, because I felt that US politics had crossed into practically everything else here, and interest in our shared medium had become tertiary, at best. It had also turned into a somewhat mutual back-scratching club, with ever less interest in anything other than rocks, trees and sunsets/sunrises, of which I share no enthusiasm. Yes, according to the name of the site, it’s just what it says on the tin. However, even founder Michael posted much more interesting (to me) stuff than that - his street work was pretty good too. On top of that, I also realised that the LuLa-as-therapy usage had turned into its own vice: I did hardly anything else all day but write, post and read.

This go round, I hope to keep it more casual.

Thank you again for your nice comment!

P.S. I wish Cooter would come back, as well as our once-resident car guy, whose site now seems to feature not a single car, but lots of expensive real estate photography. Changing times and opportunities, or just a warning about the devastating power of computer-generated images in advertising?

[dgberg]

Well, the silence remains deafening.

This may just be the impression that I get because I read very few of the tech threads, mainly because I no longer print, and have as little interest in buying more equipment.

I suppose I had hoped for some material on the emotional, subjective meaning of photography to different people - some kind of conversation on the art of the thing, rather than the science. I guess I’m doomed to disappointment.

Seems there’s not a lot I can do about that.

P.S. Even the Bear Pit has been silent for two days…

You may have me by a few years but at 74 my drive is still strong. (Especially the buying equipment part.)
I retired from my piloting career at 68 so I could be in my print studio every day and I am.
It has been addicting for me since 2009, however in the local photography world no one seems to print like they used to.
I had a local photography club workshop on printing.
I asked how many of you print your images and 3 out of 25 raised their hand.
Sure the commercial work is still here and the photographers and artisans that are selling their prints are still buying but it is not at the same level.
In my opinion Print On Demand is killing smaller shops like mine. The last 10 years I have lost 6 clients to POD.
My largest client, a dog photographer that purchased $25,000 a year of framed canvas and metal prints went POD.
Although I offer 75% of what they do as a one man show I cannot offer the full POD service which makes it impossible to compete.

[kers]

Although I offer 75% of what they do as a one man show I cannot offer the full POD service which makes it impossible to compete.

What POD cannot do is something special. For instance not just print on demand, but with your knowledge try to get more out of the printed image and use special papers.

[kers]

talking about Iphone:
Xiaomi just introduced a clever and interesting way to make a true camera of your phone:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BBuvc_K8tDg&t