stuart_whatling

Critics' responses to artists are rarely based solely on aesthetics. Meryl went for Pollock (and she ain't the first!). His position in the canon of 20th century art is almost entirely thanks to Clement Greenberg. Greenberg chose to eulogise Pollock's work partly because he liked the ideas behind it but mainly because he was already looking for an artist whose work fitted his theories on abstract expressionism - an artist he could use as a poster-child to defend his dream of a distinctly "American" school of art-theory.

 

So Jackson Pollack and his action paintings ultimately owe their fame not to a conspiracy within 'the establishment' but to the nationalism of one very powerful American art critic (who knew how much the American media would enjoy trumpeting their triumph over fusty old Europe!)

 

This mysterious art establishment that people love to castigate doesn't operate in a vacuum. Things are the way they are because it suits the media and the world at large. The tabloids (amongst others!) just love having a rant about the decadence of contemporary art cos it's easy to write and sells papers. The fact that Pollock's name lent itself to such an obvious pun also helped as it meant that neither the newspaper editors nor their readership had to tax their brains very hard in the matter of headlines.

Until a couple of weeks ago it had been a Vitessa L (Color Skopar) which, to my mind, fits the bill perfectly. Sadly though it got one knock too many while bouncing around in my bag and the rangefinder's now out-of-whack. Even more sadly, the last person to adjust the beam splitter was a gorilla and one of the all-important grub-screws has a broken head. So it may take me a while to fix. In the mean time I've cleaned up the Super Ikonta and will have to put up with the extra weight in the bag until I can find something smaller.

(This is neither an ironic post nor post-ironic.)

 

Given that those of us who don't like adverts are also the least likely to click-through (and thus earn PN some much needed revenue), an option to pay an extra USD10/year on top of the normal subsciption for the option of switching off ads would surely increase earnings. I'm sure Brian will have thought through all the options and I've been around here long enough to trust his judgement - but it might be worth considering.

<i>"Tate Modern has several rooms of photography"</i> -

More accurately (and in my view, crucially), the Tate has lots of photographic works in their collection BUT doesn't have rooms set aside specifially for them. They display photographic art like they do any other medium in amongst their thematic hangings, wherever it's most appropriate.

It's a few years since I was there but my overriding memories of Nepalganj are of it being fairly ghastly. The main industry of the town seemed to be smuggling people and contraband into Bihar and there was a certain amount of hostility towards strangers. Nothing serious - just a bit of a shock after the hospitality one finds elsewhere in Nepal. I spent a few days stuck in Nepalganj on the way to Patna and developed an intense dislike for the place so maybe I'm a little predjudiced! By contrast, Janakpur towards the eastern end of the Terai is the complete opposite - lovely place with a great temple (the Janaki Mandir) and very friendly people.

 

The western Terai also has lots of cement factories and quarries which kick up unbelievable quantities of fine dust (which will naturally gravitate towards the sensor on your DSLR - I wouldn't change lenses too often) and pollution. I had the misfortune of catching it after a long dry spell. Once out of the mountains, the bus journey from Kathmandu down to Nepalganj was one of the most uncomfortable I ever made in Nepal - half the windows were missing so we were all enveloped by choking dust for long stretches.

 

Disease-wise I think the Terai's the same as the rest of the sub-continent. Giardia's very common (pretty sure that's where I caught it) and the mosquitoes are particularly vicious.

Not quite sure why CT's suggestion inspired such sniping but to me it seems perfectly reasonable. I'm not a paid-up member yet but would be happy to cough-up if members had the option of switching off ads.

As with any city in Eastern Europe or the Middle East the biggest danger by far is the traffic. Taksim Sq has always had a bad reputation for pickpockets but I never had any trouble and I don't think it's any worse than parts of London. Indeed, when I accidentally left my bag in a fleapit cafe near the souk, a young man chased after me to return it.

One place where you'll definitely need a tripod - and which is well worth a visit - is the Yerebetan Sarai. This is one of the vast underground water cisterns built by the Byzantine empire to provide fresh water during seiges. Last time I was there the Hagia Sophia was full of scaffolding which rather spoils the sense of space under the great dome - anyone know if it's still there?

Steve, all of the advantages of the Rolleiflex stated here would also apply to most MF rangefinders - in many cases more so. But that's beside the point - the main advantage/benefit of the Rollei is... that you really want one. And there's nothing wrong with that. I talked myself into buying a Super-Ikonta recently using the same logic. Naturally I still use my old 500cm as well but adding a camera that forces your to think/work differently encourages you to take different photographs. So of course it's worth it.

With MF Shift lenses the limiting factor isn't so much optical quality but the limited circle of coverage and hence limited usable amount of shift. I used the Pentax 67 75mm shift for many years when travelling but now it's really a last resort - I can now get more movement and none of the vignetting using a 65mm Fujinon (in a recessed board) on my Wista 5x4 with a roll-film back, even with the standard bellows.

 

It's a matter of personal taste but even when shooting predominantly MF, I'd rather have a 5x4 and RFH, rather than a 6x9cm camera. The difference in weight and convenience of the smaller cameras isn't enough for me to make up for not having the option of the full 5x4, or even a 6x12cm RFH. It's true the small format cameras are easier to use with shorter lenses but with a bag bellows fitted, most 5x4 bodies will give as much movement as you'll need for 95% of shots. Some standard bellows designs, such as those fitted on Ebony 5x4's are suprisingly good for movements with short lenses.

 

As for the discussion about roll-film backs, Wista also make a sliding back which supposedly makes the job easier though I've never bothered. It doesn't take long to swap GG for RFH and with large format I like to keep everything as low-tech as posible.

Too late now... but for anyone else's benefit. London bridge (the bland modern concrete and terazzo marble one, not the Victorian Gothick absurdity, nor the one that got flogged off to some chap in Arizona) is one of the best spots for shooting Tower Bridge with the sunrise behind it. Shoot from the downstream side and you've got the Tower and/or HMS Belfast & the GLA building in the foreground. Shoot from the upstream side of the road and you might get a few early morning commuters and a london bus in shot too. The north bank between the two bridges gives some alternative (lower) viewpoints though not all of that bank is accessible so scout the location beforehand.

 

The Wheel looks fabulous from any angle but be warned - there are currently major building works along the Southbank from Waterloo Bridge to Jubilee Gardens, of as part of the Royal Festival Hall upgrading, which will be there until late 2005 - so some of the best views are currently obscured. The new footbridges either side of the railway bridge coming out of Charing Cross station (Embankment Tube) give great views but can get busy with commuters during the morning rush-hour so be considerate with a tripod (or it may well be me who trips over it.) The Upstream footbridge has great views of both the Wheel and the Houses of Parliament.

 

The Houses of Parliament is a trickier one to get with the sun behind it because at that point the river runs north-south. If you really want it, Parliament Square is the only option but it's all a bit visually cluttered. However the river-side of the building (facing due east) does get beautifully lit by the early morning sun. Standard viewpoint if you really want the Touristy shot is other end of Westminster Bridge or better still, the facing embankment in front of St Thomas' Hospital (and sorry but you can't photograph Big Ben - it's a bell - the tower is actually just called "The Clock Tower", though a depressing number of Londoners get that wrong too)

 

Buildings in the City, though some of them are visually stunning, are difficult to shoot from street level because it's all a bit cramped. You won't find many streets from where you can see the rising sun! Generally better from a distance - the Gherkin has some surprisingly good sight-lines from places as far away as Shoreditch and Dalston.

 

Finally, markets. Shame I didn't see this yesterday but one of the more unusual London markets is the Bermondsey Antiques market, ten minutes walk south of Tower Bridge and only held very early on Friday mornings. Starts 05:00ish usually all over by 10. The market there dates back to the time of Richard II and because of a bizarre ancient by-law, if you unwittingly buy stolen goods there before sunrise you gain good title to them (ie, they're yours for keeps). Result is a very curious market where you often find west-end antiques dealers searching through Georgian silverware laid out on tresle tables and lit by parafin lamp. Might make for some interesting street-shots on fast B&W but I wouldn't use a flashgun around there! Definitely at its best in winter.

Another good one in the vicinity is the Farmer's Market in Borough (south side of London Bridge) from fairly early fridays and saturdays. Can get very crowded after about 10:30, by which stage the stallholders become less friendly towards intrusive photographers but early on it's usually ok.

Of the other markets that people usually recommend, Spitalfields is a shadow of its former self and Camden Lock has now become so commercialised it's an embarassment. Even large chunks of Brick Lane market's been Yuppyfied. Columbia Rd flower market (Sunday mornings best) is still pretty good though. But if you want a really colourful market, try Southall. A short train ride out of London but quicker than flying to Delhi.

Trevor - I think you've just discovered the "Schrodinger's Leica" paradox.

The Tamron is a fine lens but I'd second the suggestion for a close focussing wide-angle as well - something like a 24mm will allow you to get the all-important contextual details of the fungus' natural environment. Sigma used to do some good ones which focus pretty close and are widely available cheap second hand.

 

As for flash, a lot depends on how damp the growing conditions are. Slime-covered fungi in wet beech forests will give you horrible reflections with a built-in flash or a ring flash. Better to have a flash bracket and ideally a small collapsable soft-box. Even something like a clip-on Omnibounce will help reduce the specular reflections.

I have a special accessory (hand-made by Montechristi in Ecuador) to avoid patch-flare. It's called a Panama hat - the model with the fedora-style brim is the most effective. Mind you, I do have to remove it when using the CV 15mm as it causes vignetting along one side of the frame.

In London we all know that winter is any time except a couple of weeks in August.

 

Had I the money, this looks like the first camera that might tempt me into digital, provided I can still use my 28mm PC Nikkor. Intrigued to see that it can interface with portable GPS devices (couldn't they have squeezed a GPS chip in?) Anyone got a use for that feature?

Just to clear up the confusion over identity; Manfrotto are Italian, Gitzo are French. Traditionally Gitzo were much more expensive (and sometimes better quality). Gitzo were also the first people to produce consumer-market carbon fibre pods. Both companies now make excellent CF tripods. Personally I've always prefered Gitzo because I like twist-collar leg locks (my first tripod was a Manfrotto and the protruding leg-locks used to snag on every passing object) though I believe Manfrotto also have twist-lock models now.

 

Bogen are just an American distributor who import both but who rebrand some of the Manfrotto pods.

Doesn't sound too bad to me (except for the big zoom) but then I made numerous backpacking trips throughout Europe and India with a Pentax67, 3-4 lenses and a big tripod. Take a PacSafe but practice with it at home before you go - they catch on any straps or buckles sticking out of your bag and can get quite maddening when you're in a hurry to go out. Also use a small padlock on the bag zips so thieves can't pick things out through the mesh. Definitely worth it though - mine saved my whole kit once in a fleapit hotel in Delhi - the thieves had tried to cut it open but didn't get very far). I always carry a Fujica GS645 as well - easy to carry around when you leave the main kit locked up but uses the same type of film so no need to carry 35mm stock.

As for standing out as a tourist, it tends to be the shorts, Hawaian shirts, baseball caps and loud voices rather than large camera packs that give that away. Some of us Europeans have big cameras too, you know.

 

I wouldn't fret too much about safety - Vienna and Munich are extremely safe and even Paris is generally safer than most big cities in the USA. Except the traffic of course - crossing the road around the Place d'Etoile makes Pamplona's bull-running look like a stroll in the park.

ps. - if you're going to the museum, check the closing times but aim to go around 5:00ish in the afternoon. During the day, the Tutenkhamun galleries are absolutely packed with package tourists but by 5 they've normally all been herded off to their next stop and the galleries are empty - my friend and I had the treasure room to ourselves for about half an hour one evening. If you're really interested in ancient Egypt, the museum generally is an essential starting point but lighting and captions leave a bit to be desired - so take a pocket torch and a copy of the AUC's excellent guidebook.

re x-ray machines, places like the Cairo Museum and the AUC campus certainly have them. Whether you'll actually have to put your stuff through depends on that day's security situation. Incidentally, the AUC (American University in Cairo) bookshop is worth a visit - a wider range of books on Egypt than you're likely to find at home and a fair bit cheaper.

 

Do try to get away from the obvious tourists spots. In Cairo you'll get loads of touts and tiresome souvenir vendors in three places; in front of the museum, around the pyramids and in the khan al khalili. Get away from those areas (sadly most visitors never do!) and you'll have very few hassles, just lots of charming, friendly and generous people. I spent a week in Old Cairo, exploring the beautiful medieval Islamic architecture, much of which is very photogenic, as are the food markets (check out the mountains of garlic just inside the Bab al-Futuh). Despite the constant noise and chaos of the Bayn al Khasrin and surrounding streets, you're much safer there than in any of the tourist hotspots.

 

If you only visit one bit of medieval Cairo, I'd recommend The Khanqah/Mausoleum of Sultan Faraj Ibn Barquq in the Northern Necropolis. For a small tip the guardian will let you climb onto the roof and up the minaret for a great view (though my own photo's from there were slightly hampered by a bit of a sandstorm). For a different perspective on Cairo, the Coptic churches and cemetery around Fustat (I think the metro station is Mar Georgis) are also worth a visit.

Gaffer tape. Equally effective at the other end of the temperature scale for stopping carbon-fibre tripods getting too hot to handle in deserts.

It does get easier with practice but it can be cumbersome when you haven't got a safe clean surface to rest the camera on. I normally leave the camera on the tripod and tilt the head right forward when changing films (or right back to get the old film out). Having regularly used a P67 in India and the middle east where dust was a major problem, I developed a love for 220 since it halves the number of reloads.

All the Indian x-ray machines I ever saw on domestic flights were the same kinds as you'd expect to find in Europe, except for the one at Patna Airport, which looked like something Wilhelm Roentgen might have made. But that was a few years back and unlike Udaipur, Patna isn't exactly a tourist town.

For some reason Air India security always used to insist on you removing batteries from cameras before the flight but don't know if they still do.

 

If the heat of Udaipur gets too much, head up to the old hill station of Mt Abu for some cool breezes and pleasant treks. Plus of course the spectacular Jain temples at Dilwara.

all depends on the back design. as Kevin said, with cameras like the P67 and most MF Rangefinders, the film has a dead straight path and never gets kinked. On the other hand, with some removable-back designs, the film follows a tortuous path as it bends round the rollers and kinking is always a possibility - some MF backs for large format cameras (the slide-in types) are even worse. However, as the anecdotal evidence above suggests, there's no hard & fast rule. Quite apart from the geometry of the back I suspect the type of film base plays a part, as well as ambient temperature and humidity. There's also the question of how far across the film-gate the bit of film that was wrapped around the roller ends-up at exposure time. The only way to find out whether it's going to be a problem for your own set-up is to try it. Whoever said he doesn't like to leave it in for more than an hour sounds a little anally retentive to me - let's hope he never has to do any really long exposures.

 

Might help with 220 but vacuum backs for 120-film sound like a practical joke, unless you're really concerned about having the backing paper perfectly flat!

<i>"He traded in three mint Nikon F100's."</i>

<br>

The obvious clue here is the word "mint". After use in the field on special ops? Maybe not.

I use the Nikkor M 300mm lens on a Wista VX, which I believe has the same bellows draw as the wooden models. Apart from the fact that you wouldn't want to use it on a windy day, I've not found any probs but only ever used it for distant subjects.

 

If focusing on nearby objects is still a problem, Wista make a neat little gizmo that works with any camera that takes Wista/Linhof sized lens panels - a set of three screw-together tubes with a lens panel front and back. Like a variable top-hat extension panel. With all three tubes it's not very portable but with just one section it slips easily into a camera bag and should give you ample closer focusing range.

There are some interesting s/h camera shops around the British Museum which combine well with the obligatory visit to the museum itself (even if only to photograph the glassed-over central courtyard). The best by far is a shop called Aperture on Museum St - they share the premises with a cafe. Stock various types of camera but especially strong on manual Nikon gear, both AI and pre-AI. In the same area is Pied Bull Yard, with the Jessop's Classic Camera Shop (thankfully nothing like the rest of the dreadful Jessops chain) specialising in obscure older stuff, as well as a specialist Leica shop just across the square. That Leica shop is mainly for the rich leica fetishist but there's also the much more down to earth and friendly R G Lewis on Southampton Row which is geared more towards people whose Leica's live in a camera bag rather than a display case. Of the chains, the Jessops on New Oxford St (3 mins walk from the British Museum) should be avoided like the plague, especially the upstairs part but the Jacobs shop directly opposite is not too bad - it has an amazing and unexpected Aladdin's cave of s/h equipment round the back of the store.