One Grain Amongst the Storm

The nation today was exposed to the information from nothing less than the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, or, as they say, straight from the horse’s mouth: “SBI is facing a situation where most of its branches and those of State Bank of Indore are competing for the same business, in the same market, under the same brand. This has prevented SBI from fully exploiting its brand equity for driving business growth”.

Hence, “the Cabinet gave its nod to the merger of State Bank of Indore with SBI. Acquisition of State Bank of Indore by SBI would allow economies of scale in terms of footprint, manpower and other resources.”

Never heard such candid and succinct diagnosis of a ‘situation’ from Oracles of New Delhi before! Remedy advised though failed to impress my weak mind. If internecine competition is indeed a ‘situation’ with the State Bank Group, the mighty wizards have successfully knocked off the tip of the iceberg by merging State Bank of Indore, and State Bank of Saurastra, earlier. What lies beneath, however, is a massive residue of five more State Banks, namely, the Bikaner & Jaipur, Hyderabad, Mysore, Patiala and Travancore. I am sure, by the same token, they may cause discomfort not only to SBI, but among themselves too. Ironically, the group is also facing a shortage of human resources that can be easily pooled for the common cause.

I have long given up writing, nay, thinking, on merger of Associate Banks. But the sudden flash in the pan plucked me long enough from the blinkered drudgery of life to nod my head in approval. It’s kind of reminiscent of Spain’s goal against Netherlands in the 116^th minute of the World Cup final when almost everyone had given up on Paul’s prophecy.

So long folks, till the Octopus catches another associate competing with the SBI!

Yesternight, I was caught red-handed drooling at the Nikon photographic lens section of B&H Photo Video online store by the Moral Police, a.k.a., the wife. A chill befell freezing everything alive wherein the unasked questions hung in the mid air betwixt her eyeballs and mine:

Why must I be a photographer, if it doesn’t earn me a dime?

Can the family withstand yet another financial typhoon?

And the most incriminating:  If I can’t be a good photographer with the lenses I own, what is the guarantee that the fifth or the sixth piece of glass will make me a better photographer?

Hard pressed to produce anything meaningful, my vocal chords sputtered like a carburetor dying in the middle of a submerged street. I was reminded of Fra Lippo Lippi, the Victorian monk and painter, immortalized in Robert Browning’s famous dramatic monologue, who was caught wandering by the night guards at ‘an alley’s end where sportive ladies leave their doors ajar’ in a rather colourful section of the city at midnight. Caught in an apocalyptic moment in his life, Lippi burst forth against the hypocrisy of religious leaders who ordained that indulgence in human form and flesh was sinful, both in life and art. He forcefully argued how the cloistered life of celibacy imposed upon him was unnatural and against human elements, and how, he was actually being truthful to youth, life and nature.

Similarly, will the earth shatter if I falter at seductive displays of voluptuous glass and spend a lecherous moment or two at pages of such intent? More so, for a toothless tiger like me whose credit card limits can barely scrape the bottoms of a single pro-class Nikkor! Whether I’ll ever be able to lay my hands on the triumvirate of 12-24 f/2.8, 24-70 f/2.8 and 70-200 f/2.8 VR, and whether my pictures will hang in galleries of highest class across the continents, should not be a puzzle requiring the prowess of an IBM Deep Blue, but aspiring for the image quality easily achieved by the top class photographic lenses makes me work all the more harder with my paltry set of kit lenses and primes.

Thus, being the owner of kit-class lenses (and balls), I quickly hit the ctrl-alt-delete

combination and slipped in the permafrost of my bed, hoping to wander across the tabooed catalogues in eons of future, and quietly resolving to be a real photographer, someday.

“Flaming (also known as bashing) is hostile and insulting interaction between Internet users”

-Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia

Recently, one of the myriads of non-descript crevices I keep drifting in on the net, ‘officially’ charged me with ‘flaming’ for a rather mundane discussion on competing models of Nikon and Canon cameras. Funnily though, the Original Poster of the thread was rather thankful to me about the suggestions I’d made. I was amused and perturbed at the same time as I’ve been a netizen since the text-only days of the Internet and I take pride in my netiquette. All along, I have carefully chosen my words, syntax and ideas, and thought twice before hitting the Post button. I am sure most folks will be hard put to recollect a single instance where I may have rubbed a co-participant the wrong way, leave alone ‘flaming’.

Now, those who know me well will tell you how impassioned I may get while defending my beliefs.  One of my seasoned friends and a senior tirelessly exhorts me against the hamartia. However, even he would admit that it takes some knocking to get me worked up and start spewing flames on the adversary. The source of consternation in the aforesaid incident, therefore, was neither the absurdity of the charge leveled against me, nor the absence or presence of worth in the models of certain brand, but the unwritten ‘rules of the forum’ which implied that the participants, lowly beings that they were, dare not raise an eyebrow to the cloths of the Emperor, a.k.a. the Administrator. And since the Emperor chanced to be the owner of certain brand of photographic equipment, anyone found even breathing against it would be charged with Capital Crime!

Since the summons had arrived in a private message, and it was condescendingly pointed out to me too, I offered that the proceedings be held in open court, in full public view of the participants of the forum. The appeal vanished as soon as it was posted, quite like my earlier ‘flaming’ expressions. Frustrated, I posted a ‘Goodbye’ message for the benefit of the odd sympathiser, who I believed had a right to the knowledge of my impending future disappearance. This also vanished as if charmed!

Well, the moral of the story is that while in the dingier sections of the fishmarket, you not only have to love the Administrator’s Dog, but the entire present, past and the future clan of the Dog! Fortunately,  few keystrokes away from the vain fiefdoms, I can surrender myself to the grace of communities like Photo.net. And although I have no plans of embracing silence anytime soon, words from an old poem by T. S. Eliot well up in my mind from nowhere:

Those who sharpen the tooth of the dog, meaning

Death

Those who glitter with the glory of the hummingbird, meaning

Death

Those who sit in the sty of contentment, meaning

Death

Those who suffer the ecstasy of the animals, meaning

Death

Are become unsubstantial, reduced by a wind,

A breath of pine, and the woodsong fog

By this grace dissolved in place…. 

Not many moons ago, Ole Jørgen Liodden was an ace Canon photographer. Armed with his ‘tank’, a.k.a the EOS-1Ds Mark III, he scoured the Arctic permafrost for sparring polar bears. Quest for frolicking king penguins had him lying on his belly on icy South Georgia seashores. Lodged knee-deep in unforgiving snow, he stretched the autofocus limits of many a Canon, shooting sea gulls, hawk owls and hunting eagles. He returned again and again with stunning images of wildlife that stunned the folks and the professionals alike.

Suddenly though, the old companionship crumbled like a sheet of ice into bottomless pits. OJL sold his ‘tank’, 5D Mark II, recently acquired 7D along with the assortment ‘L’ lenses, in favour of the duo of Nikon D3S and D3X, paired with gold-rimmed Nikkors. The latter was admittedly a ‘gift’ from ‘the Dark Side’. But the Nikon apparatus overwhelmed him by its extremely fast and precise autofocus and superior picture quality that he could achieve in a single day. The decision to adopt Nikon for his future photographic journey was easy to take.

The community is choked with contrasting emotions of the two camps. For those on Canon’s side, the treachery couldn’t have been blacker and the venom spouted is suitably worded. The former Canon ambassador became a Nikon whore overnight. There are, of course, insinuations of a banal deal. Canon was incensed enough to expunge all references to the fallen photographer from its Canon Professional Network pages.

For those of Nikon it was a natural thing to do. The good photographer needed to equip himself with a superior imaging system like D3S/X to realise his full potentials.

Regardless of what OJL has to offer, the net is rife with speculation about his extreme step. He was apparently miffed by being bypassed for the field tests of Canon 1D Mark IV. Eventually he would receive a beta body for a brief period with a sealed memory card chamber, with no permissions to download the images or the video for viewing in full, leaving him unsure of the final picture quality. Canon appears to have become touchy about their products getting negative publicity while still in throes of birth, more so after the 1Ds Mark III faltered in the autofocus department. However, Canon’s strategy seems questionable since the early products are put in the hands of no mean photographers. As the high-caliber reviewers stumble upon the glitches instinctively, it would be ideal not to have them handcuffed for the welfare of all, and that includes the end-users.

OJL’s switch to Nikon should also be viewed in the light of his conviction that a photographer should never be fettered to equipment and technology. Prior to the switch and before Canon erased all signs of him from their CPN websites, there were hints of a photographer larger than the brand itself, on the page titled, ‘What’s in your kitbag?: Ole Jørgen Liodden’:

“To only think about equipment and technology is not the right track to go down….If you want to build up a name for yourself, you have to take pictures that you want, not like other photographers or how your customers want you to take them. Take your pictures from your inner visions, with your own angles and your own touch.”

Towards the end of March, of what is known as ‘the annual financial closing’, the accidental banker in me braces for the approaching storm with clinched fists and gritted teeth. It’s payback time for the mounds of litter left around by the careful staff all along the year, ‘willful default’ of the considerate borrowers, neglect of the prescient depositors, hieroglyphics of multi-layered taxes imposed by the State and the Cardinal Sin of unachieved targets. The twister eventually dumps me barely breathing in the middle of megatons of printouts which must be arranged in precise sets bound for differing destinations. And just as I seem to be regaining control of my limbs, the Statutory Auditors descend like bolts of lightning.

For the past two years or so I have been more of a taxidermist than a photographer. Every now and then I have unpacked the bags, extracted the bodies and lenses from their respective shells, brushed off the dust, recharged the batteries, put in fresh sacs of silica gels and repacked and returned the stuff to the cupboard. I have doggedly though stuck to photography forums and have made insignificant noises now and then about the odd photograph uploaded or a new DSLR launched. But come March, eyeballs start threatening to detach themselves from the gray goo behind and vanish into thin vapour. Sleeping like a log seems to be the inevitable call of nature rather than sleepy logins into forums.

I get overwhelmed by anxious mails and queries of the photographic community unexposed to the vagaries of financial closings. I am equally touched by the emotions of those speculating whether I toppled off a cliff trying to capture a perfect sunset and have become feast unto the eagles, or my foot lost hold of an aging parapet and the fall blew my head into an unrecognizable mess forcing the police to donate the body to the local medical college for a small fee. It’s a routine, I assure all of them, and I’ll soon venture into wilderness with a camera slung around my neck, leaving the sordid world of figures behind. And I’ll be back on the forums soon discussing why the mesmerizing pair of green eyes of the Afghan Girl is more haunting than the quizzical stare of Monalisa; and how the Monk who sold his Nikon to buy Canon gear will return one day inconsolable in his repentance!

They say they understand but they know well enough that the question of livelihood has probably swallowed the passion of a photographer for good.

Getting married? Be sure the photographer you choose is able to tell her F-stops from tripods! Especially, be wary of morons prowling around with slow Canons! For the life of you, DO NOT miss the following video:

Actually, I owe the title to Scott Kelby rather than the ongoing Nikon Marketing teaser where something ‘Nikon’ is claiming to be Sexy, Hollywood and Marco Polo, all rolled into one, with Innovation thrown somewhere in between. I could have waited for a couple of days for the mystery to reveal itself with the countdown cards, each with a companion trait, but I figured it is unlikely to make any difference to my final thoughts on the subject. And the credit to Scott Kelby? Well, I’ve stolen this trick of attracting readers with ‘fake titles’ from his famous book ‘Digital Photography’!

Don’t go away just yet. It is not really that bad. I will take a plunge right into the middle of Nikon, Sex, Hollywood, Marco Polo and all.

The Nippon Kogaku K. K. started operations as early as 1917. And while they have not been quite the originator or the innovator the way Leica or Pentax have been, they have perfected and produced some of the finest cameras and lenses the world has ever seen. They started out making lenses for Leica and Contax and ventured into manufacturing their own ‘Rangefinders’ and small cameras. The ‘F’, launched in 1959, is famed to have triggered a revolution in single lens reflex cameras. indeed, the successive ‘F’ series have gained cult status among professional photographers and photojournalists the world over, thanks to their ruggedness and system compatibility. Their mettle has been tested from the Antarctic to the Sahara, and even in the extremities of space, as exemplified by the numerous voyages aboard NASA spacecrafts. Even after the world went digital, Nikons have retained their class and fan following. The D2XS, and recently the D3S, were chosen by NASA for photographic documentation of their unearthly ventures. Going by their feats, I wouldn’t have been shocked if Nikon cameras had gone ahead and claimed, “I am Neil Armstrong”, instead. But to have made it a bit innovative, or rather sexed it up a bit with a Holywood twist to it, what about:

My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, Commander of the Armies of the Cameras….

As it turns out though, photographic excellence may not coexist with financial excellence. The fate of legends like Kodak and Pentax are rather sordid sagas of competition, marketing and psychological warfare. In the duopolistic scramble between Nikon and Canon today, Nikon cannot afford to lull themselves into complacency of success they are having with their DSLR cameras. They are frantically trying to gain a foothold in the curiously lost battle of compact cameras where Canon have been ruling, thanks to a slew of series and models which are good at what they do and are considered ‘sexy’ too, courtesy catchy shapes and colours. In fact, one of Canon’s famous series is even named ‘SX’, only a vowel short of the magic word! Big deal. Nikon now seem to have decided being rather direct about the sex part of the whole stinking thing. And within the sexy frame you have flashes of facts, fables and fictions a la Marco Polo. Very, very romantic!

Alas, if only the photographic equipment makers focused on producing cameras that remained sizable in the hands of photographers rather than chipmunks! If only the cameras just took great pictures instead of trying to churn out Holywood flicks, cutting out cheap audio albums, being internet browsers, turning into GPS navigators and mobile phone devices! If only, the cameras were left alone being cameras rather than being converted into skimpy, touchy, feely, sexy ipods with all modes merged into a single Sex-Priority mode that would auto-sense the sex of a subject and shoot even before you switched it on! Trust the Marketing gurus to induce you into asking just the same.

Never have the DSLR-bashers had it so good. Finally, there is the ultimate in point-and-shoot with sensors nearly as large as those in four-thirds DSLR cameras. And there is an electronic viewfinder to scan the world in ‘realtime’. Really high-tech. Why, you can change the lenses too! It is called EVIL, or the Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens camera. At the time of writing this the Olympus E-P1, a.k.a. the “PEN”, and the Panasonic GF1 are already hogging the eyeballs in the Internet space, if not the real world markets. Samsung too seems to have thrown the hat in the ring with the NX-10.

The whopping contraction in size has been acquired by hacking off the mirror mechanism altogether. In a typical SLR body, the light beams are reflected towards a pentaprism/pentamirror which in turn directs them through the viewfinder. Before you have the feeling that this is an elegy on the bygone mirror and prism, I would like to point out that many pros are given to use “mirror up” in their DSLR’s before tripping the shutter for avoiding vibrations caused by the snapping movement of the mirror. Thus, mirrors do have a negative side effect. Is this a reason to rejoice, then?

Not really. Although reluctantly, I am willing to let go the pristine real-life view of the subjects before I take the image in favour of the real-time electronic view, if it offers better and sharper pictures. Theoretically, it does. But it also seriously reduces the size of the camera. The problem is, they have bloated the sensor (for the standards of a compact camera)! And bigger sensors need bigger lenses! A typical zoom lens has several groups of glass elements inside them. Precision mechanisms and long barrels are required to move these elements to change the focal length. What is the point if I still have to snap a converter and use huge professional lenses to dwarfish bodies. How do they remain petite anymore? If the industry has to mint an entire series of miniaturised lenses for the EVIL format, what is the point in having a large sensor?

The evolution from Film to Digital SLRs has been a gradual one. The likes of Nikon started with the DX format (1.5X crop factor to 35mm) when they launched the D1 in 1999 and it was not till 2007 when they came up with D3, their first FX (full format 35mm) DSLR. It should not take one long to realize that the professionals looking for higher quality look up to full format cameras rather than the cropped DX version.

Yes, small is beautiful. But excuse me, it somehow appears to be a case of ‘Honey I shrunk the DSLR’! Just as everything in life, you set the limit somewhere. Can you really enjoy a HD movie on the small screen of your mobile phone? How effective are the mega dollar thrillers like the Star War series, the Jurassic Park saga or recently, the Avtar, on your home television panels?

I am not seeking to establish that the new EVIL format will fail. Far from it, we should witness the established players like Nikon and Canon flooding the market with their models sooner than later. The technology, however, is poised to replace the point-and-shoot, or more specifically, the advanced compact cameras –or “bridge cameras”, if you have it that way — rather than the DSLRs. Incidentally, the existing entry level DSLRs have already been shrunk to manageable sizes for those who hate the bulk of the bigger brethren of the race. You only have to try holding a Nikon D3000 or a Canon 1000D in you hands to realize this. Nevertheless, it doesn’t stop the www.wired.com from coming up with “5 reasons to ditch your Digital SLR” :

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/five-reasons-you-should-ditch-your-dslr/

Its an amazing piece of yellow journalism, indeed.

I caused some heartburn when I wrote ‘Go, get a DSLR‘ and I’m still busy wiping foreign froth off my face! A couple of connoisseurs who couldn’t bring themselves to descend low enough to put in a comment on this blog, called me long distance to tell me how very backward looking I was. DSLRs will be passé in a year or two, I was told, and I probably was not ready to acknowledge the advancements in technology. Was I an ostritch or something? See, what happened to all those doggedly sticking to film photography!

Sure enough. Unfortunately and fortunately, the goo doesn’t stick to the face of someone who drools at the scent of a new gadget! I, who have kept the date with Intel, chipset to chipset and with the nth upgrade to my console am none the God! Bricks to polyphonic mobiles, Razrs to Iphones, I’ve had them all: my battered bank account would bear testimony to that. Suddenly now I am the retro fool who wants to screech his gramophones and rewind his ISO 100 film.

Surprisingly, the very fact that I advocate Digital rather than Film SLRs is conveniently lost on my detractors. Why, if I am the rabid purist, did I not stick to Film SLRs? Come on, I will make it simple and tell you that! In case of Digital vs Film, two overpowering facts in favour of digital photography sealed the fate of the latter. One is the power of ‘instant review’. The second is, of course, the power of ‘delete’ and shoot ‘anew’ without any jolt to your wallet. I can throw in the power of increased dynamic range and ISO sensitivity also for good measure but this will sooner turn out to be a never ending slugfest of film vs. Digital. This has been made possible because of the innovative use of digital sensors in place of disposable films. Apart from this, nothing else has changed for the equipment otherwise refered to as “Single Lens Reflex” cameras. The same however does not hold true for the case of DSLR vs point-and-shoot cameras. With more compact camera models than there are stars in the Galaxy, none of them has been able to match the might of life-sized sensors and appendable lenses of a DSLR. My point is, I am not blind to new developments in technology but the broth has to settle before I start sipping it off my daily cup.

But this may change and how! The world is waiting with baited breath the advent of the Apple Tablet, “a cross between an iPhone and a laptop” with a 10 inch high resolution screen. Now, this is getting interesting! What if the huge facia could act as a lens with integrated glass elements and aperture, feeding an enormous sensor behind! That would certainly beat the Hasselblads, or wait, the resolutions of even View Cameras! And when that happens, I will be there indeed, in the overnight queue to grab my piece of the Tablet that will put the Nikon D3s and Canon 1Ds of this world to shame. Meanwhile, go get a Tablet that is a phone, a media player, a personal computer and an image snapping device all magically rolled into one!

I am no tiger in the woods. Forget tigers, I am not even a coyote in the woods! Yet, what exactly were the Internet sharks thinking when they stole my non-descript website url uspandey.com a year back? That I’d be running to them with two rucksacks of gold, one in each arm? Maybe Tiger Woods would do that if it saves his marriage. Certainly not me for a string of symbols, or worse still, for a string of zeroes and ones!

But the Internet is deeper than you think and the potent mafia is closer to you than you can imagine. Just to give you an idea, and sorry if you feel uncomfortable, every fetch and send to your bank account rubs shoulders with an infinity of cookies, trojans, worms and malwares. What I am driving at is that it didn’t take them long to figure I am broke and that, I probably will have to sell my kidneys to buy a decent pair of Nikkor lenses for my DSLR that I’ve been pining for! And they dumped me on the beach with the rest of the silt and probably carried a prize catch or two away. I, of course, mean the website url by ‘me’.

No, it doesn’t end there. The Net is bristling with smalltime crooks and fraudsters of every imaginable hue. I specially love the kinds who disclose how you just won a lottery of $1,000,000,000 and how a bunch of shameless customs officials are holding the booty for a mere $1! They take over where the Sharks quit.

So I get this mail from best-domains-on-earth or some bullshit.com telling me they will be selling my favourite domain in an auction soon. However, they say, if I pay certain $$$s it would be mine again. Déjà vu. I almost hit the delete button when I notice it is not the same outfit from down under which approached me the last winter. You know what, curiosity killed the cat! So instead of brushing it off but thinking about it the entire week, I did a ‘whois’ for the lost url. Surprisingly, it was lying there, as I said, dumped on the beach with the rest of the silt, unregistered with anyone. This cat wanted a ransom for the fish he never was in possession of! Before I realized, my fingers had fished out that nemesis of my life, a.k.a. the credit card, from my pocket and I had booked the domain again for a mere $5! I am hard put to put it to some use but at least it will not be misused or hawked around the stinking alleys of Internet. The clock, of course, has come a full circle.