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Jack DeJohnette: One of The Best

May 6, 2012 by 1 Comment


Jack DeJohnette is one of those extraordinary jazz musicians whose career is largely unknown to those who do not follow jazz. Too bad. (Let’s do what we can to remedy the situation.)

Background: He came up through Chicago’s avant-garde scene, working as part of the AACM (Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians); played with John Coltrane’s quintet in 1966; then worked with a young Keith Jarrett in Charles Lloyd’s group; then made some history as a drummer on Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew sessions (and on eight other albums from the early 1970s); soon, his circle included John McLaughlin, Chick Corea and Dave Holland. In fact, for 25 years, he has been a part of a trio with Keith Jarrett on piano, and Gary Peacock on bass–their series of Standards albums are extraordinary (watch them here). The complete list of DeJohnette albums and collaborations is a long one; fortunately, Wikipedia maintains a good list. As both a leader and a co-conspirator, DeJohnette’s portfolio includes so many albums, so much excellent work, that it may be difficult to know where to begin.

For starters, I’d suggest a 1984 CD called Album Album because it offers both an avant-garde sensibility and easy access for anyone willing to take the time to listen. The interplay between saxophones–the formidable David Murray on tenor,  the lesser known John Purcell on alto and soprano, and a young Howard Johnson on tuba and baritone sax–is consistently inventive, with a relentless flow of interesting ideas, varied textures, and explorations of old ideas made new. DeJohnette is the controlling influence, ever present, often leading the way. Plus, there’s this sense of style, short bursts in lavish settings, that provide the basis for an album released in 2009–that’s 25 years later–called Music We Are.

For DeJohnette, the melodica is an old friend: he played melodica on his first significant solo album, excerpted here on YouTube. On the 2009 release, the melodica provides a winning c

ombination of tango sensibility, bits of remaining avant-garde (sounding more mainstream here, perhaps due to the passage of time), and the kind of atmospheric soundscape that was central to Weather Report’s earliest work. The creative collaboration here is with pianist Danilo Perez, who explains, in the album’s liner notes, that he has been playing with DeJohnette since 1992, and that his first encounter with the famous drummer was listening to DeJohnette playing “some beautiful piano.” John Patitucci plays electric and upright bass. They work together beautifully. That is to say: this is a very special album, one that pulls together so many different jazz styles, so successfully, that it defies categorization. It swings, it makes you think, it makes you dance, it does a whole lot of stuff really well.

In fact, they explain how it all comes together on a 25-minute DVD that comes, free, with the Music We Are CD. This is a solid documentary, explaining the creative process from composition and performance through recording and editing. After watching it, you will wonder why every CD doesn’t include an accompanying “how we did it” DVD.

Hey, I was going to write about the newest DeJohnette CD, Sound Travels, but this article is probably long enough. I will write about Sound Travels soon, I promise.

Filed Under: Creative, Music Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Is the iPad Mini Coming This Fall, Not Summer? (Updated)

April 18, 2012 by 1 Comment

Key facts, or, at least, key rumors courtesy of MacRumors:

  • $250-300 retail price
  • “A 7.85-inch “iPad mini” display with a resolution of 1024×768 would carry a pixel density of 163 pixels per inch, exactly the same density as the non-Retina iPhone and iPod touch models.”
  • Competes with upcoming Windows 8 devices

No, this is not a definite product. But it is an intriguing rumor.

But today’s visit to Barnes & Noble, and yesterday’s visit to B&H Photo in Manhattan confirm one counterintuitive idea: in comparison with competitive products, the iPad is kinda big. I like it that way, but I use my iPad for business purposes. For casual use, something smaller might be just the thing.

—

UPDATE as of July 3, 2012:

“The new model will have a screen that’s 7 inches to 8 inches diagonally, less than the current 9.7-inch version, said the people, who asked not to be identified because Apple hasn’t made its plans public. The product, which Apple may announce by October, won’t have the high-definition screen featured on the iPad that was released in March, one of the people said.”–reported by Bloomberg, posted in MacRumors.

Filed Under: Mobile, Products Tagged With: , , , ,

Do You Think You Can App?

April 16, 2012 by Leave a Comment


Think back to the time when you wondered whether you could desktop publish (before you knew what a “font” was), build your own website, or shoot or edit video? All of these were once unavailable to the average person. Now, Apple has filed a patent that could lead to make-your-own apps.

No surprise that message boards are filled with doubt. Making apps is too specialized, too complicated, too much of a commitment for the average person, too demanding in terms of knowledge and training and skills. Doubters point to iWeb, which was a make-your-own website tool that Apple provided, then pulled from the market.

Still, I wouldn’t dismiss the idea too quickly. No, most of us can’t or won’t build our own websites, but technology and invention race around the rocks–so we blog, and post images, and Tweet, and distribute information via tools that weren’t available the day before yesterday.

Do I want my own app? Sure, I guess, but the question suggests a solution chasing a problem.

If we flip the question, and assume, for example, that we (jointly) own an artisanal bread bakery, we might want to make it easy for our customers to know what’s baking, and what’s fresh out of the over, and we might not want to pay someone to build an app. A bake-your-own app might be just the thing for small business, or for authors who want to provide more than an eBook can easily provide, the list of potential problems that a homegrown app could solve is large. What’s more, the interactivity of a good app creates a high level of engagement between the provider and the customer, so apps could be the step beyond blogs and tweeting.

But I think there’s even more to the question. Blogs, tweets, apps–these assume current technology. And yet, we know that current technology lasts only a few years before the whole game changes. By 2015, we’ll be into advanced optical displays, a better cloud that makes the whole idea of local storage and local apps obsolete. Quite likely, we’ll be buying a broader range of devices–and I’m sure I don’t want a circa-2012 app as the my interface with thousands of internet radio stations (I really want easy-to-use internet radio in my car with lots and lots of stations from around the world).

Nothing is standing still–and that’s one of the challenges addressed in the Apple Insider article–how to build apps that easily (and automatically) customize for an increasingly varied range of devices.

Filed Under: Creative, Learning, Mobile, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

What about Black-and-White?

April 10, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Back in the analog stone age, shooting in monochrome was a creative choice made in advance. You’d buy a few ISO 400 rolls of Ilford HP5 or Kodak Tri-X, and head out for a day of serious photography, hoping for just one image worthy of framing.

In fact, black-and-white analog photography offers several advantages. There is at least four times as much picture information, so contrasts can be stronger, textures can be more refined, and enlargements can be, well, larger. About half of this work is done in the field, mostly by selecting and composing with intelligence, and by selecting an appropriate optical filter to place on the lens. For example, sky contrast can be dramatically increased by using a red filter, but sometimes, detail in shadows is lost with a red filter, so an orange filter may be more suitable. Corrections are then made in the analog or digital darkroom, a trial-and-error process that becomes easier after a lot of hours of experimentation and instruction.

Working with a digital camera, the best black-and-white images are derived from color images, but maybe not in the way you’d think. The adventure begins with a digital camera that can shoot RAW images–so plan to spend at least $500 on the camera. Lesser cameras, and less-than-serious photographers with better cameras, shoot in JPG to jam more images onto an SD card. If you start with a JPG created in the camera, your black-and-white images will lack detail, clarity and snap. Your expensive digital camera offers an instant monochrome option. No, you shouldn’t use it, not if you are serious about your photography.

Instead, you can achieve miracles by post processing your RAW image in Aperture, Photoshop, or other software capable of handling RAW images. With desktop software, you can add the equivalent of colored filters and gradient filters, with a level of precision unavailable in the field, and unavailable in old school darkrooms.

In his book, Hoffmann goes into considerable detail about how this picture was made, and why it is so effective. He’s a very good teacher.

Is it worth the time? It’s worth the time if you train yourself to create the best possible images by learning a lot about composition, mood, street photography, landscape work, architectural photography, and abstract work from a master teacher. I’ve spent the past month or two studying the second edition of a fine book entitled The Art of Black and White Photography by Torsten Andreas Hoffmann, published by Rocky Nook Press. He provides the necessary technical information, but spends most of his instructional time on important photographic ideas: how to avoid the cliché, achieving balance, dealing with visual irritations that cannot be moved, capturing people in their natural surroundings, visual rhythm, form and composition. Hoffmann is especially effective when he writes about, and photographs in, a strongly graphic style: strong contrasts, superior use of line and form, repetition to suggest speed or solidity. (Study the three Hoffmann images in this article, and notice, for example, the repeated pattern of small verticals–the fence posts in the top image, the decorative balusters in the second, and the train doors in the third supported in the distance by the verticals of the Manhattan skyline). These are not snapshots–they are photographs–and if there was any doubt about a blurry line between those two ideas, it disappears here. These are advanced ideas, most suitable for the experienced photographer or for the ambitious newcomer. The reward is in the learning, of course, and also in the tour of Hoffmann’s portfolio, which is sampled in this article and offered in expansive form on the photographer’s website.

The photographer is based in NYC. This image is one my favorites, but it comes from his website, and does not appear in the book.

Filed Under: Art & Photography, Books & Print, Creative Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Nico? On the top of the list?

April 6, 2012 by Leave a Comment

On newsstands until July 25, 2012

Number 13 on the list of all-time best albums, according to Rolling Stone, is the 1967 Verve Records release, The Velvet Underground and Nico. It’s also the number 1 album on The  Observer’s 2005 list, “The 50 Albums that Changed Music,” which is, in fact, more interesting than the new Rolling Stone standalone $11.95 magazine now on newsstands.

I decided to explore the web in search of other top 500 lists, and their kin.

My very favorite list comes from the British music magazine, The Wire because it discards the arbitrary distinctions and deals with music, not categories. So we’ve got  work by Igor Stravinsky, Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Cecil Taylor, Lennie Tristano, Oliver Messaien next to the inevitable Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, and Marvin Gaye.

I especially like The Observer list because it acknowledges world music, beginning with their #24, Youssou N’Dour’s Immigres, and because each of the list’s entries are explained in a clever way: “Without this … N’Dour wouldn’t have met Peter Gabriel, there’d have been no African presence at Live 8. In fact, ‘world music’ would not exist as a section in Western collections.” Similarly, the Fairport Convention gets its due for introducing folk music into the British rock scene as #45, Liege and Lief, an absolutely lovely album with a lineup that includes the spectacular Sandy Denny as female lead vocalist. (Similar due should have been paid to Peter, Paul & Mary on the American / Rolling Stone side, as the celebrated Bob Dylan’s career (he occupies RS slots #4, #9, #16, #31… ten slots in all) would have mattered less without the spectacular success of their top ten single versions of Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.”

The Virgin 1000 list is fun because it is massive. And, sure enough, there’s that critically acclaimed Nico album in the top 15, with Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue nearby (these lists don’t quite know what to make of jazz, or country, or most of the other genres–no bluegrass, a bit of gospel, etc.), but every list seems to include Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. For those who wish to explore jazz beyond the limited view of Rolling Stone and other mainstream music publications, one good starting place is an Amazon list of jazz recordings, whose top ten includes Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, João Gilberto, Charles Mingus, and Thelonious Monk. An equally worthwhile list of world music recordings is also found on Amazon, a category mostly ignored by the RS list, save for Bob Marley albums, and, happily, The Indestructable Beat of Soweto, a stunning collection of South African music from the mid-1990s. On that Amazon world music list, I’m not sure that I would have placed Fela Kuti’s adventure with Cream drummer Ginger Baker at #3, but I’m sure glad to see the Bulgarian State Television Women’s Choir hanging out near Ali Farka Toure, Gal Costa, and Huun-Huur Tu, all artists with spectacular albums and names that most Americans have never heard before.

The top 200 albums on RS’s list also confused me because just three of those top 200 were made in the 21st century (Radiohead’s Kid A, Kanye West’s Late Registration, and Arcade Fire’s Funeral), just five if you go up to the top 250 (add: Green Day’s American Idiot and Eminem’s Marshall Mathers LP). Sure, there are the weird choices–that happens with any list like this–so The Zombies’ Odessey and Oracle claims slot #100, and  Quicksilver Messenger Service’s 1969 album, Happy Trails, makes it to #189.

And you know that I’m ending this article with my list of albums that Rolling Stone missed, but should have included:

  • T-Bone Walker – Complete Imperial Recordings
  • Folkways: The Original Vision – mostly songs by Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie
  • The Essential Pete Seeger – or any of the various compilations of his work for Columbia Records
  • Chet Atkins – Guitar Legend: The RCA Years
  • Peter, Paul & Mary – Moving or Album 1700 or Ten Years Together
  • Harry Nilsson – Harry and also Nilsson Sings Newman
  • Larua Nyro – Eli and the Thirteenth Confession, Gonna Take a Miracle, and the spectacular, surprising Time and Love 3-CD collection
  • Blood Sweat & Tears – their second album
  • John Sebastian – Best of, or his first solo album, John B. Sebastian
  • Billy Joel – Piano Man (among some of his best character / story work)
  • Elton John – his first album, as sweet as they come
  • Weather Report – the jazz group’s first album, self-titled
  • Van Morrison – Tupelo Honey
  • The Traveling Wilburys – their first album

Sorry my list isn’t longer or more interesting (kinda heavy on the late 1960s early 1970s–just as the RS was, in fact!). I’m writing away from home. More later on this.

Filed Under: Audio, Music, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Edward Tufte Kills Two More Kittens

April 5, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Last night, I was one of two keynote speakers for an innovation event. As a speaker, I’m supposed to be the teacher. Three people in the audience were fast asleep. I am their grateful student.

I spoke for over a half hour. I’m pretty sure we should pass a law, or perhaps, a constitutional amendment, that assures no speech will ever run longer than 20 minutes.

I structured my speech with over 100 clever little slides (I used Keynote, which is cooler than PowerPoint). Every visual cue was carefully tied to specific words in my written script. So I paid more attention to the script and the visuals than I did to the audience. Occasional ad-libs only made the speech longer.

The gentleman who preceded me, a college president, used Prezi. What a cool visual presentation! I remember almost nothing he said. (Too busy looking at the cool imagery.)

So here’s a digital insider take on speeches, the morning after. Just talk to the audience. Tell them what you know. Allow yourself one index card with three key points.

Anybody in the audience who want to see the charts, graphs, photos, etc., tell them to visit your website or blog. In that environment, they can study the visuals in their own time, not in a crowded auditorium. When they hear hear you talk about an important idea, they can visit your website for more information.

Which is to say: speeches are terrific for revving up the audience and introducing new ideas, but they are not very useful for detailed presentation of ideas. Websites are not a good way to rev up the audience and introduce new ideas–there is no personal touch, except, sometimes, with an extraordinary video–but for details and the day-by-day updates, they’re terrific.

I trust the guys in the back row slept well. Last night, they were the most powerful teachers in the room.

For more on Tufte/kittens:

Tufte Kitten Kill Count

Intro to Tufte:

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Filed Under: Creative, Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Bye Bye Bookstore (Mea Culpa)

March 31, 2012 by Leave a Comment


I love bookstores. Also, record stores, art supply stores, just about any kind of store where creative work defines the merchandise.

And, I’ve been fortunate because there are three good independent bookstores less than a half-hour from my home: one in the county seat, one in a town dominated by tourists, and one in a university town that’s also an easy drive (plus, several more that sell used books).

Unfortunately, this month, we’re losing the neighborhood bookstore that’s just five minutes from home. They didn’t make it. They cite e-books, internet bookstores, and the nearby Barnes & Noble (the nearby Borders closed a few years ago). The economics confuse me. Maybe you can make sense of it all.

My family buys a lot of books: probably 40 or 50 books each year. We buy more books, for personal use, than anybody we know. Assume 50 books at $20 per book, and that’s $1,000 in retail business per year. I would be proud to say that we’ve bought all of them from our local independent booksellers, but I can’t say that because it’s not the truth. It would be fair to say that we’ve bought about 1/4 of those books while traveling (we especially like Toadstool Bookshop in New Hampshire, for example), and half of them online because of the convenience, price, or quick delivery. The other 1/4, we probably buy locally.

One good example: a biography of the old superstar, Will Rogers, priced at $24.95 in paperback from a local bookstore, available for $16.47 from Amazon (with free shipping). We’re smart consumers–we saved $8.48 because we bought from Amazon. In a year, we make this decision maybe 20 times, so maybe we save $200 per year by buying this way. As I said, we’re smart consumers.

But we’re stupid citizens. Our extra $200 per year matters to a local bookseller. If 100 customers paid the higher price instead of saving the money, that’s an additional $20,000 per year for the local bookseller. If 1,000 customers, the additional revenue nears a quarter-million dollars.

So here we are, all of us, the book lovers and the book consumers, happily saving money by shopping late at night and taking advantage of super saver shipping and the deep inventory that online booksellers provide… all the while forgetting about our neighbor, the small business person, who is spending every late night trying to figure out how to keep the local bookstore’s doors open.

When I think about this, I feel stupid. As I said, I really like bookstores, but just this morning, I ordered two books from Amazon, and I saved $7.33 on one of them and $15.78 on the other. This afternoon, I thought about visiting my local bookstore, the one that has been five minutes away from my house for the past few years.

It was closed.

I feel foolish. Why didn’t I do more to keep a community institution in place?

Filed Under: Books & Print, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,

Save the Country!

March 28, 2012 by 2 Comments

In our hearts, we know what’s wrong, and we know that it’s not about Democrats or Republicans. It’s about the money that flows into political campaigns, the revolving door between industry and agencies that should be regulating without industry influence, the political bashing that obscures the real issues, the real reasons why our food is unsafe, our cellphones were never properly tested to assure that they do not produce cancer, why our financial system collapsed, why the jobs went away and people lost their houses while the big banks and the big car companies somehow made out okay.

Sometimes, it takes a smart professor to parse the issues, and present them in a way that makes logical sense. Here, the professor is Lawrence Lessig, well-known for his work in the synchronization of copyright issues with the realities of new technologies. Lessig has shifted focus. In his new book, Republic, Lost, Lessig explains how and why we have accomplished the decimation of our democracy, and what we ought to do about it. This is not a book about politics. Instead, it’s a book about economics, foolish decisions, and fundamental thinking about what a country ought to do, ought to be.

The fundamental problem is relatively simple. Special interest groups, including big companies, big industries, unions, and others with vast money to spend, now control the agenda, and the decisions, made by our legislators. This is accomplished by funding political campaigns that now cost so much money, candidates are unable to raise the funds in any other way. Money is distributed not as bribes, but within a “gift economy,” in which lobbyists control the flow of funds, favors, and even the words in legislation that few legislators ever manage to read before voting. The size of this gift economy is spectacular in its size and influence, resulting in a sustained distraction for even the best-intentioned legislators whose time and decision-making processes are, according to Lessig, dominated by this system.

Where Lessig is clear about what the problem is, why and how it has gobbled up our representative form of government, and how much money is involved, he is less wonderful when it comes to solutions (which is to say, Lessig is clear thinking and often quite brilliant in his assessment of the current situation, but even his big brain struggles with what the heck we should do now). Still, he does present several seemingly sensible ideas.

Of course, the first solution is the simplest: let’s eliminate large contributions, and instead, share the burden with many small contributions. (In this regard, Obama had the right idea.) The Grant and Franklin project would allow each person in the U.S. to contribute $50 (Grant) of their Federal taxes plus $100 (Franklin) more to one or more individual candidates, or to their favorite political party. No more PAC or political party funding–candidates can receive a maximum of $150 per person. Here’s the kicker: for candidates, this would be voluntary. That is, each individual candidate would decide to follow the Grant and Franklin path–and those who do not, well, the American people would know who they are. Lessig: “If a substantial number of candidates opted into this system, then no one could believe that money was buying results.”

Then, the “clever lawyer” part of Lessig kicks in with an idea that’s intriguing, if not altogether practical (why should we rely upon practical ideas?–this is nation built by dreamers!). Lessig again: “Here’s a quiz. What’s required to be elected to the House of Representatives? You’d think that one requirement is that you be a resident of the district from which you’re to be elected. All the Constitution requires is that at the time fo the election, you be ‘an inhabitant of that State in which you shall be chosen'” And with that, Lessig is off and running…

Why not, he asks, run one candidate in several districts with a flash of anarchy in his or her midst. The only reason he or she is running is to force the other candidate to “publicly commit” to the Grant and Franklin approach. And for those candidates who do manage to get elected (inevitably, some will), he or she commits to: holding the government hostage until Congress enacts a program to remove the fundamental corruption that is now the rule in our government, and once that program is enacted, he or she will resign from office.

Lessig goes further: he wants a constitutional amendment.  Here, he enters a deeply analytical, harshly critical approach to his own idea, using his legal powers to define a path that could make an amendment possible. And, he reckons, some rich and powerful people are likely to come along for the ride.

He’s better on describing the cause and current situation than he is on prescribing the proper solution, but it’s unreasonable to expect one person, however smart, well-educated and clever, to define a plan to rebuild the republic. But he has taken the first step: he has clearly detailed the current situation and analyzed it in ways that break through any specific political dogma or belief system or party affiliation. And I know that his thinking has affected my thinking, and, presumably, some tens of thousands of other people’s thinking, and that’s a start.

So here’s the question from my side: I buy the analysis, and I want to be part of the solution. My starting place follows Lessig’s suggestion: I need to spend some time visiting a few websites, and figure out how I might insert myself into the process. His suggested websites:

Call a Convention

Public Citizen

Voters First Pledge

Fund for the Republic

Rootstrikers

BTW: The publisher is Twelve Publishers. It’s an imprint of Hachette, a larger publisher, but Twelve is delivering on a small, powerful idea: publish a dozen important books each year.  And make them count. I like their approach enough to include it here:

  1. Each book will enliven the national conversation.
  2. Each book will be singular in voice, authority, or subject matter.
  3. Each book will be carefully edited, designed, and produced.
  4. Each book will have a month-long launch in which it is the imprint’s sole focus.
  5. Each book will be nationally advertised.
  6. Each book will have a national publicity campaign.
  7. Each book will have a digital strategy.
  8. Each book will be worthy of the attention of discerning book reviewers.
  9. Each book will have the potential to sell at least 50,000 copies in its lifetime.
  10. Each book will be marketed and distributed by the Hachette Book Group, the company with the best hit ratio in the American publishing business.
  11. Each book will be promoted well into its paperback life.
  12. Each book will matter.
Filed Under: Books & Print, Learning, Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

A Quality Camera You Won’t Leave at Home (4 of 4)

March 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Continuing the series about small, high-powered digital cameras, our discussion finishes up with video. And this is the part that confuses me most. These cameras shoot very pretty pictures–high-definition, widescreen, beautiful image quality. But none of these cameras allows the user to control or monitor the audio associated with that video.

Audio Rant

Let me rant on that first, and then, we’ll talk pictures. Each of these cameras can record audio with a built-in microphone, usually a stereo microphone. What’s missing: an audio meter so you can see whether the audio being recorded is too loud or too soft, a jack for an external microphone, and a jack for an external earbud or headphone to monitor the audio as it is being recorded. In comparison with the photo and video imaging in these cameras, these audio capabilities are very simple. But they are largely absent.

This Olympus device adds a microphone via the camera's flash shoe. It costs $60 at B&H, the source of this photo.

Olympus offers an $89 microphone and cable (SEMA-1) that slides into the hot shoe of the PEN cameras, and it works nicely, but the cable is short, and because it’s connected directly above the lens, the cable finds its way into the shot whenever the camera is turned or manipulated. So what we have is a high-quality digital audio recorder that’s useful only to record “wild sound”–the ambient sound on location. To record sound that’s comparable in quality to the video side, you must record audio separately, on a standalone digital recorder, and then match the audio and the video, on separate tracks, in your editing software. That’s possible, if you have time and patience, and a good set of editing skills. (This will be the topic of an article in the near future.)

End of rant.

Very Good Video

On the picture side, the cameras are very, very good good. Even the $499 Olympus E-PM1 can record up to 29 minutes of  magnificent 1080 60i HD video by just pressing a button. The newest Olympus E-M5, scheduled for April, takes a leap forward by recording H.264 .mov files, making capture and editing easier, and mostly eliminates the dreaded “jello effect” in which vertical lines wobble during a pan of even moderate speed–an improvement over current PEN cameras.

This rather ugly picture is part of a rather clear video explanation of the jello effect.

This is not to minimize the astonishing video image quality available from these cameras–perhaps more astonishing because motion video is not the primary purpose or function of these cameras. Certainly, we’re seeing professional videographers use their DSLRS, with special grips, to record television programs–digital photography has really changed the way we think about video production. And, if you place a mirrorless camera on a tripod, you can achieve stunning results. Even hand-held, with image stabilization, automatic exposure, and automatic focus, the Olympus and Panasonic cameras can do great things.

The same is true, with varying degrees with success on the focus side, and in contrasty situations, for competitors. Of course, you can use just about DSLR to shoot terrific still pictures and still video. And, in most cases, you’ll be able to do so with an earplug, an external microphone, and much more control over the video as it is being recorded. But those cameras are bigger and heavier than their mirrorless counterparts.

Summing Up

If you want to own a full-featured digital camera that takes great pictures and offers every conceivable feature, buy yourself a DSLR. You can buy a very good one, perhaps the Canon EOS Rebel T3i with an inexpensive 18-135mm lens, with an 18 MP APS-C sensor for just over $1,000.

For me, this is a camera that’s fun to use, fun to own, and likely to leave home only sometimes. It’s just too big and too heavy for me to carry along with me. Certainly, I would bring it special events or when I feel like spending an afternoon taking pictures.

I would be more likely to carry something like the new Canon G1X ($799), which offers a 14 MP sensor that’s slightly larger than the one used by micro four thirds cameras, but smaller than the typical APS-C standard. It’s a wonderful small camera, a bit heavier and bulkier than it appears to be, with an optical viewfinder (old school: you simply look through it, like a telescope) with plenty of manual control. The lens deflates my enthusiasm: it’s a zoom, 28-112 mm with not much of a large aperture: f/2.8-5.8. If this camera was offered with a normal prime lens and a maximum aperture of, say, f/2.0, I’d be all over it. Still, this is a camera I want to know more about.

Essentially, I want the equivalent of a good DSLR, but I am not willing to carry around anything that’s bulky, large or heavy. This is why mirrorless cameras intrigue me. So far, I believe the Olympus E-P3 offers the best combination of solid construction, good design, superior image quality, and, most important of all, very good prime (non-zoom) lenses at reasonable prices (and, zoom lenses, too). I love the fact that these cameras (like their DSLR siblings) shoot high quality video as a kind of bonus. And as much as I have come to enjoy the EP-3, I am very intrigued by the new-ish Panasonic GX1, and even more intrigued by the E-M5, the first new Olympus for 2012.

For a complete rundown on all mirrorless cameras, circa December, 2011, click here.

And, BTW, here’s a really clear review of the E-P3.

—–

Here are the links to the rest of The Quality Camera That Goes Everywhere:

Part 1: Lens

Part 2:  Sensor

Part 3: Body

Filed Under: Art & Photography, Audio, Creative, Products, Trends Tagged With: , , , ,
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