Funerals and the family archive

I haven't blogged for the last couple of weeks for various reasons: the main one being that my aunt who lived in Sussex died recently, and, with my brother, I had to organise the funeral.

Among other things, I put together a eulogy (tribute? I'm not sure what the right word is) that I read out at the funeral service. It is one of those occasions where it is critical to come up with not just the right words and emotional response, but also to tell the story of someone's life and their contribution. It helps to have quite a lot of key facts and dates to hand – and there were too many gaps in my recollection. Fortunately, my bother and sister-in-law could fill in a lot, and  discussions with other relatives brought more perspective too.

Events like this always make me go back to the family archive of pictures, and other sources of memories. Something that was nice was to be able to gather a bunch of pictures to put on my iPad to bring along to the wake afterwards.

As I've mentioned previously, I'm slowly scanning some of the film archive, so it was easy just to pop some on the iPad. I found a couple more pictures that were interesting the day before the funeral, and scanned them too.

One of them is of a gathering for my grandmother's 90th birthday, nearly 30 years ago, and taken on my aunt's camera. The original is awful, and showing bad signs of the colours deteriorating. But a little work in Lightroom brought the colours and contrast back well enough, and even though it is not very sharp, it is sufficiently clear.

The picture got a lot of interest, with us trying to work out who everyone was: most were easily identifiable (even if half have now died), but one person, although we recognised her, just could not be placed. Even if it has none of the technical qualities one would expect of a current picture, and it would interest no-one outside our family, for those present at the funeral last week, it was one of the most important pictures I took along.  (I'm also the only member of the immediate family not present – I'd recently landed in Baltimore – and this only makes the picture more interesting to me).

So, that experience just reaffirms for me some things that are intuitively obvious, but worth restating:

• Never, ever, neglect taking straightforward, standard family pictures, even when you think you should be making winning art instead: family pictures are much more important and lasting in value.
• Annotate everything!
• Keep records of key dates (even, or perhaps especially, if they're not accompanied by any kind of photographic recording).

Annotation is easy in the digital age. For a start, dates are recorded in the EXIF anyway. Fortunately, quite a lot of the family archive has dates written on the back of prints: for instance, the date of my Grandmother's 90th party is written on the back of the print.

In Lightroom, it is easy to add a description and keywords, which makes finding pictures so much easier than looking through albums of prints and files of negs. These descriptions persist into the metadata of the exported JPGs which I'm emailing to the family (OK - this is only useful if people know how to view basic metadata, but at least is there).

The other thing is key dates. Paper diaries still work perfectly well for this. However, I've pretty much gone over to Google Calendar for both work and personal purposes. I think it should be possible to use Google Calendar as regular journal by adding notes to the description field for any event. Easily searchable, I hope, for the foreseeable future, and from any internet-connected device; the problem is that no-one knows what Google's future holds, so the longevity of such data remains to be determined. The other thought is just how much personal info should you put out onto the intertubes? Once out there, even if it is password-protected, the family history then has to be considered searchable by anyone. As much as anything, that's why I don't do Facebook. I suppose that Facebook in the end will take over all these functions (for as long as it exists …).

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I've hardly been taking pictures recently. The weather has been pants. We've had two very dry winters in a row here in Southern England, so there's a hosepipe ban on. As soon as that was introduced, naturally, the rain started. So now there are floods. The bluebells are out, but I've not had a chance to make my annual pilgrimage to the woods to photograph them. Usually, I stop a few times on the way home from work to take pictures of them, but it has been just too wet. This week, with luck, I'll get to them.

Change in the air

Two cameras with the same size sensors, and 100mm lenses.

Anyone who reads the photo blogs can't help be struck by a feeling of "all change". I regularly scan the blogs by a number of photographers whose work I admire, and who, at the time I came across them, all used digital SLRs. If they are in any sense representative, the sands are shifting.

I was struck by the reactions to the recent announcements of the Nikon D4 and Canon 1DX. These are the new top of the range paparazzi and sports shooters dream machines: full frame, plenty of megapixels, see-in-the-dark sensitivity, high-quality video, blah blah blah. Joe McNally has given the D4 a terrific review and has shown both in pictures and video that this is a device that can deliver in spades. I've no doubt that both D4 and 1DX will do exactly what their manufacturers claim. The collective saliva glands of the professional users should be on full gush. And yet....

There seems to be a disproportionation going on. For instance, Kirk Tuck's businessman's conscience got to him and he cancelled his order for a 1DX and decided to spend the money on marketing instead. Meanwhile he is now using smaller system cameras (Nikon 1 series and Micro 4/3) for some of his professional jobs. Similarly, Thom Hogan makes the point that the smaller system cameras deliver the kind of image quality that got professional work published not very long ago, but without the burden of carrying huge size and weight. Carl Weese on TOP demonstrates that micro-4/3 cameras can yield images capable of being printed at least as big as I'll need in the immediate future.

On the other hand, David Hobby has gone in the other direction and decided that digital medium format suits his needs for image quality, without the requirement to machine gun the subject. Digital medium format has long been a mainstay of Lula, and Mark Dubuvoy has just published a very nice essay making the point that even with smallish output, medium format is likely to beat smaller formats every time for quality.

So maybe, things really are changing. Where digital SLR's reigned recently, the small system cameras are an alternative with the real benefit of small size and weight. And medium format retains an unchallenged appeal for those who really need the ultimate in quality (if you don't have to ask the price).

All this prompted me to get out my OM2n from the box it lives in, at the back of a cupboard. At the moment, it comes out a couple of times a year for me to run a few rolls of B&W film through; and then I put it away again when my jaw sags at the price per frame of developed film. 

Putting it up against my recently acquired D700 made my jaw drop as well. How have we got into this situation? The D700 is a monster by comparison. A brilliant camera, vastly more capable in pretty much every respect than the OM2n, but just a monster in size.

When I bought my OM2n in the early 80s, I chose it because I knew I was going to the Himalayas fairly soon after and wanted something small and light to carry. At that time, the prevailing design theme was to make small, light, robust cameras for serious photographers: Nikon FM/FE, Pentax MX/ME, OM1-4 etc. But with the advent of digital, the idea of the small, lightweight, robust serious camera seems to have got lost. The sensor in the D700 is the same size as that in the film cameras I've listed here. The D300 is another "serious" camera, but with a smaller sensor, and still about the same size and weight as the D700 (well, a bit lighter but not much). Why do they have to be so big? I'm not picking on Nikon alone: Canon and Sony's full frame cameras are pretty similar in size.

The other reason that all this comes to mind is that at New Year I went for another potter in the Embankment area with a bunch of Leica Luggers. I borrowed my friend’s M4 with a 50mm Summicron. Smaller, lighter and more discrete than the D700. But then again, my film days are mostly (even if not entirely) over.

Nevertheless, the D700 seems to me to be inescapable. Wonderful image quality, reliable and fast focusing with the ability to accurately track the subject. Somehow, I can't see myself with a Nikon V1 attached to the end of the 200-400 mm zoom at Fairford. For the moment, for me, the digital SLR remains the essential minimum.

But with the advent of the compact system cameras (Sony NEX, micro-4/3, Nikon V1) things are changing. Not full frame sensors yet, but maybe one day. The Leica M9 is a lovely compact full frame mirrorless camera, but unfortunately, I have to ask the price. Now, it may have a small sensor, but how about the rumored OM-D?

From the Archive: In the Foothills of the Himalayas

Olympus OM2n, Zuiko 100mm f2.8 lens, Kodachrome 64

I'm slowly scanning pictures from my film archive. This is one I like from 1983 photographed while walking in the foothills of the Himalayas in Uttar Pradesh.