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October 6, 2011

In Northern California this morning it’s raining. Tomorrow it will be sunny and warming. That seems about right.¹

¹The title is from Walt Mossberg’s “The Steve Jobs I Knew.”

Professional photographers need an effective, portable way to display digital images. The current methods, web sites, flash drives stuffed with jpegs, CD-ROM’s burned full of hard work universally suck.

The Part Where I Miss the Good Old Days

As a 4×5 shooter I spent 20 years lugging around portfolios of my work as mounted transparencies. Submissions were FedEx boxes sent at considerable expense. We, photographers and editors, all used magnifying loops and light tables to view the images. There was stooping and lifting and racing to the nearest FedEx drop point but I knew that the editor that received the work would see exactly it exactly as I did. All the clerical work and shipping costs bought a level playing field.

Things are different with digital and different does not imply better. Displaying my digital imagery is mostly out of my control. I fuss with images on a color calibrated LCD display in a room painted neutral gray. My display, mostly because it plugs into the wall and cares not at all about battery life, is forgiving of my viewing angle. Clients view these carefully tuned images on anything and everything. The commercial clients that I visit have cramped, uncalibrated LCD displays or, worse still, laptops with heavily polarized displays. The web images are viewed in Internet Explorer X – so any color management is ignored so I don’t bother.

The Horror. Viewing Images on Portable Devices

Current laptop computers, no matter the size or the manufacturer, are pitifully bad at displaying photographs. A laptop screens restricted viewing angle makes proper viewing of images an exercise in precision head holding. Gadgets like the Acratech Viewing Angle Gauge are only a small help. Netbooks, which are built to a low price, aren’t yet even awful at displaying color images – the manufacturers of netbooks strive to reach the lofty peak that is awfulness. I wish them well.

Worse than any laptop is the LCD on the back of any camera. No matter how good, a 3″ LCD is, it is far to small. Contemporary camera LCDs, though better than laptops, also suffer from color shifts and falloff as you move off axis. The “too small to be useful” argument also applies to the way-to-expensive-for-what-they-do dedicated field storage and photo viewers. They are over priced and underwhelming.

The iPad – A Possible Solution

In Apple’s soon to be released iPad may finally be a portable device suitable for the proper display of digital images. I say this, of course, without actually having ever seen one.

The iPhone / iPod Touch are already capable, portable image viewers. High resolution, less fussy screens and multitouch together combine for the best portable viewing experience. They are too small, but the ability to easily selectively zoom helps. The photo display app is complete if simple.

The iPad evolves the iPhone / iPod Touch into a bigger and far more capable device. Specific to photography it uses an LED-Backlit IPS Display. The IPS tech is the key here. In both videos of the unveiling and still images posted by Apple and others, the iPad’s LCD screen appears to ignore viewing angle. This is not the case in other battery powered displays which, I’ll mention again, are unusable for critically viewing images.

Again, relying on demo footage, the iPad’s include Photo app seems first rate and built to take advantage of the devices multitouch control. And, not incidentally, it appears to be really fast.

As a web device, the iPad will run the Safari Browser and Safari honors color management. A properly configured web site can ID the device and send Color Managed content with some genuine confidence that client and photographer are looking at substantially the same thing.

The Inevitable iPad Postscript

The hype, generated not by Apple so much as the interwebs, surrounding the iPad / Apple Tablet may be unprecedented. Without actually using one, I refuse to participate in pronouncing it either the end of computing as we know it or, conversely, just a big iPod Touch with no discernible purpose. I will however provide you with opinions by people that have touched it, however briefly, and who are known to me as thoughtful writers about things tech. First would be John Gruber of Daring Fireball. Gruber has written extensively on the Apple Tablet that became the iPad. Also, beneath the roar and above it all is is a very reasoned consideration of the iPad by Frasier Speirs.

(Early the next day…)

Two more links that explore the iPad and the future of computing (with thanks to John Gruber for the original links.) First an essay on old vs. new computing. Finally, a thoughtful “pre-review” of the iPad by Andy Ihnatko.

In 1977 I built a custom bike. At its core was a 65cm Eisentraut Touring Frame. I was 26, and 6′ 2″. Earlier this week I sold the frame to Jay.

While I didn’t ask, the Eisentraut frame was likely older than Jay. I also did not ask why Jay wanted to ride this relic – I didn’t have to. Jay gets it.

As a bike the ‘Traut was my principle transportation for roughly ten years. I chose every component. It was me with wheels. When the bike and I were in our prime we were a human powered kinetic sculpture. We were more agile than traffic and more clever in our route finding than any satellite navigation system.

The bike was idiosyncratic in a good way. It was built while I lived in Arcata, California and I lived there for the next two or so years. As transportation in a place known for its rain and fog I choose Phil Wood bearings (bottom bracket and wheel.) I had Ray Glover, an artist in chrome molly the equal of Albert, build two brackets that converted the bike from side pull to center pull brakes. I prefer center pull brakes on an every day bike and Ray indulged me. A bike ridden for everyday transportation needs fenders and so fenders were added. Things need to be transported so on went front and rear Blackburn racks. The shifters on the down tube as God intended. Most everything else was Campy. Except for the generator and light. I had the folks at Eisentraut do some braze on’s and among them was a friction generator mount.

Mid-1970's Eisentraut Frame Detail

Arcata is occasionally flat but, thanks to the Coast Range, more often hilly. The gearing on the bike, built 32 years ago, was of the stump pulling variety long before Mountain Biking made small front chain rings all the rage. When the bike and I rode up Fickle Hill the front wheel would barely stay on the pavement and had just enough forward speed to keep it upright. But I could stay seated even as real bike riders had to stand.

I left Arcata for San Diego in 1979 and I spent the next five years with the worlds best commute. I lived in Pacific Beach and worked in a building on the beach in La Jolla. With 7 miles to ride each way and only occasional weather the car stayed parked and the bike and I made the daily round trip.

The route to work was uneventul. The route home was through downtown La Jolla. First came the tranquil climb from the beach up the hill above the village. From there the ride was back to sea level through a maze of traffic. Automobiles were driven by folks who could not see bicycles and every parked car had a door that could fly open with uncanny timing. However, perched high on the 65cm Eisentraut frame, I made safe, quick passage through all this hundreds of times.

Except for the occasional flat tire, the Eisentraut was beyond reliable. As a big, chrome molly frame, it was just soft enough for daily riding. It went exactly where it was pointed. Although I never abused it, the ‘Traut had no problems with the standard insults of a daily commute.

And then, thanks to a virus that settled into the wiring between my brain and middle ear, my balance became compromised and the Eisentraut with the careful chosen components was parked. And it set, well hung, for 20 years.

My balance has mostly returned but not so much that I could use the bike in the way that I intended it. So, after much stalling, years of stalling, I sold it to Jay. I don’t really know Jay. But in the several emails and the ten minutes that it took to exchange the now ancient bike for some small amount of money and a jar of homemade jam, I met someone who values the work of a craftsman and values it as the tool that it was intended to be. The bike will be used – not collected as art but bought for transport.

Good luck Jay. Watch for knuckleheads – they’re everywhere.