Smaller cameras

I've worked all my professional life with big cameras. Bronicas, Hasselblads, Linhof 4x5 and 8x10. But for my 35mm work, which was mostly for slides. I used a Nikon FM. For the life of me, I can't remember why I chose it rather than it's bigger brother professional Nikons. Choose it I did and it served me well for many years. It was petite, small and comfortable in the hand and non aggressive in it's appearance, but usually, that didn't matter. Later, after a career switch and then a switchback, I ended up using a Canon, which of course, was big and ugly. But for my personal work, which eventually led me to Alamy, I bought a Contax G2, a rangefinder but totally automatic (if you wanted it) with fantastic Zeiss lenses. It was a joy to use, small and light but with a quality which I considered to be the equivalent of the 6x4.5 cm Mamiya I used professionally a lot. So a bag of the camera and four lenses was a doddle to walk around with when exploring exotic places.

Therefore I am gladdened by the industry trend towards EVIL cameras. EVIL stands for electronic viewfinder interchangeable lenses. Fuji has the XPro-1 and the lenses are supposed to be very good. Nikon has it's new 1 system and Canon is bringing out it's solution in late summer. Meanwhile the Olympus OM-D EM5 is getting good reviews. This is a case of the industry listening to the gripes of it's customers and that is gratifying.
Bear in mind that the DSLR will not be made redundant by this development. I could never have envisaged using my G2 in the studio, and many of the Alamy contributors who have gone in the direction of EVIL cameras have not disposed of their DSLRs, they've simply added to their arsenal.
I still wish somebody would resurrect Contax and bring back a digital version of the G2 and it's Zeiss lenses.

British Journal of Photography

The eminent British Journal of Photography has been published since 1854. That's a hell of a long time to be such a guiding light to enthusiasts and professionals alike. My father took the magazine and his father before him and even perhaps his father, because they were all professional photographers, in all sorts of genres. I grew up in a house where the bookshelves were lined with the typical A5 sized green bound annuals since, I think, the 1920's, at least. The photos were exciting and inspiring. As were the published formulae for developer and fixer solutions.
In the 1960's, as a teenager, I remember that the content took a decidedly technical direction and the magazines were filled with graphs and diagrams and a lot of industrial photographs. A bit boring for a young lad like me. Then, of course Dave Bailey, Terence Donovan and Brian Duffy came along and changed everything. I don't remember much of their influence on the magazine, but the stuff in the annual was explosive.
In recent times the BJP, as it has always been called, has changed from a weekly to a monthly, with a massive improvement in print quality. It really is printed very nicely. But, you see, I have a gripe which not only I have expressed before. The BJP seems to have forgotten it's niche as an important professional journal by not publishing the work of professionals. Most of the photos appear, to me at least, to be of the art variety. Contemporary art photographs which explore the possibilities of the captured image.

Now that's all very well but the guy who is practising photography as a profession is not getting the opportunity to see what the creative minds in his field are doing. I honestly think, that despite the rationale behind illustrating what directions art photographers are pursuing, a lot of the BJP's loyal readers would like to see what the up to date directions professionals making a an everyday living from photography are taking. The editors of BJP are adamant in their concept of what the magazine should publish, but I think I am expressing a desire to see a change which many share.

UPDATE: IPTC data and contact details

It really is unfortunate that Alamy sometimes cannot clearly explain what it means. In the blog post IPTC data was explicitly named as being where you ought not to put your personal contact details. Now, I know that most professional photographers do put their details there to prevent their images being orphaned. However, the point is, it really doesn't matter as far as images placed on Alamy matters, because they strip all the IPTC data out and replace them with Alamy's contact details. That didn't strike me until I downloaded a couple and checked the file info.
So what Alamy seems to be concerned about is stuff in the other, display fields - keywords, captions and description etc. Why couldn't the nice people in Alamy just have said that. My apologies to all for the fuss engendered.

Contact details in Alamy images IPTC data

I think it is probably more than possible that most of us have included copyright and contact data in our Alamy images IPTC data. I know that for most of the time I have been submitting I paid little or no notice to IPTC, but over the last couple of years, with all the scares about online piracy and illegal use of images I have a standard routine which includes my name, address and phone number in the IPTC data when I'm finishing up an image.
This, of course, is contrary to the terms of my contract with Alamy, which completely slipped my mind as, I'm sure, it did with many others. Alamy is conducting a sweep of all the images to automatically remove these but are stating that there is no guarantee that other annotations may not be affected. That's a worrisome prospect.
Here is the link to Alamy's post.

Nikon 1 cameras

UPDATE:  A kind reader has alerted me to the fact that Alamy has restored the Nikon 1 cameras to it's recommended camera list, as of the 17th April. Very interesting...... I suppose it means that some contributors managed to push the cameras too far, but many others effectively showed that the cameras were very capable of satisfying QC requirements.

Photoshop and Lightroom (2)

It appears that I might have been wrong in my assumption that my computer may not be capable of handling Photoshop CS6 or Lightroom 4. My workflow dedicated computer is running with an Intel Core 2 Duo chip which is actually not as old as the Pentium 4 and more powerful that the minimum required. So says my son, the software whiz, and who am I to doubt him?
Back to my quandary - do I upgrade to Photoshop CS6 or become a convert to Lightroom 4? When I get over my back operation, I should probably download trial versions and try them out.

Nikon V1 and J1

Nikon V1 and J1, the new CX format camera system which was unveiled just a short while ago quickly appeared on Alamy's recommended camera list. Unfortunately for those who went for it, it seems that Alamy has changed it's mind. Today I was checking whether Canon's G1x had appeared on it yet, when I noticed that there was no sign of the Nikon cameras. I think that this is unprecedented - as in, a camera being removed from the list.
So far, it still looks as only sensors of 4/3rds and upwards in size will satisfy Alamy's QC requirements.
Check update above.