New body, old glass

One of the downsides of digital technology is the speed of obsolescence. The great thing about having a Nikon D70 is that it enables me to combine being digital without abandoning the collection of old Nikon lenses I’ve built up over the years. I have, for example, an 85mm f2 AI-Nikkor which is a terrific portrait lens; and an f1.2 50mm (shown here) which provides the nearest thing to night vision one can get on a camera. (Well…, I think Leica do an f1 Summilux, but it costs more than the GNP of Ecuador.) Of course the effective focal lengths are different with the digital body (I’ve been multiplying by 1.5 as an approximation), but the great thing is that the old lenses work fine. Just switch the camera over to manual operation, clip on the lens and bingo! — you have a digital camera with really good glassware. I’m sure purists will point out that they’re not optimised for the new system, but the results look pretty good to me.

En passant, it’s funny the way the photo-retail industry concentrates on resolution as the defining characteristic of digital cameras. Pricing seems to be entirely driven by sensor resolution. Until recently, nobody paid much attention to the quality of the lenses. Maybe that was because with a 3 megapixel camera you couldn’t tell the difference between the results given by a plastic zoom and those produced by a proper lens. But as the industry matures, manufacturers are beginning to pay serious attention to lenses. Some Panasonic digital cameras, for example, now come with Leica glassware. And the high-end Sony cameras have used Zeiss Vario-Sonnars for quite a while.

Visual memories

Karlin Lillington has written a memorable piece about the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation set up by Steven Spielberg after he made Schindler’s List.

Apple overtakes Google as the world’s leading brand

Apple has unseated Google to become the most influential brand of 2004. According to a survey of 2,000 advertising executives, brand managers and academics, Apple is the hottest brand in the world. Hmmm…. after hubris comes, er, nemesis.

Lessig on Wilco

Larry Lessig’s column on a band that really understands the Net. Excerpt:

“The band Wilco and its quiet, haunted leader, Jeff Tweedy, is something different. After its Warner label, Reprise, decided that the group’s fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, was no good, Wilco dumped them and released the tracks on the Internet. The label was wrong. The album was extraordinary, and a sold-out 30-city tour followed. This success convinced Nonesuch Records, another Warner label, to buy the rights back – reportedly at three times the original price. The Net thus helped make Wilco the success it has become. But once back in Warner’s favor, many wondered: Would Wilco forget the Net?

We’ve begun to see the answer to this question. Wilco’s Net-based experiments continue: the first live MPEG-4 webcast; a documentary about the band in part screened and funded via the Net; bonus songs and live recordings tied to CDs. Its latest album, A Ghost Is Born, was streamed in full across the Net three months before its commercial release. And when songs from it started appearing on file-sharing networks, the band didn’t launch a war against its fans. Instead, Wilco fans raised more than $11,000 and donated it to the band’s favorite charity. The album has been an extraordinary success – and was nominated for two Grammys.”