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The New Monochrom - a fine report

skimmel

Member
I agree that Sean's reviews are great but very difficult to read due to formatting, etc. Has anyone asked him if he could change his site? I certainly will but wonder if there are enough paying members who might ask him about this.
 

jonoslack

Active member
I agree that Sean's reviews are great but very difficult to read due to formatting, etc. Has anyone asked him if he could change his site? I certainly will but wonder if there are enough paying members who might ask him about this.
I think he's been asked hundreds of times - he's worried about people stealing content (rightly) and hasn't found a better way of doing it which he trusts.

I'm working on him slowly :)
 

asiafish

Member
I think he's been asked hundreds of times - he's worried about people stealing content (rightly) and hasn't found a better way of doing it which he trusts.

I'm working on him slowly :)
Please work faster. Flash is an annoying PITA to anyone with an iPad or iPhone or who values long battery life on their Apple laptop.
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
I think he's been asked hundreds of times - he's worried about people stealing content (rightly) and hasn't found a better way of doing it which he trusts.

I'm working on him slowly :)
As I said before, if he doesn't trust me as his paying customer to use his material in the way that I might use ANY review material, available anywhere else, then why should I be bothered to deal with him?

Reviews are topical, short term bits of information that I want to be able to mine for data, annotate, and references in discussion. Reviews are of no value whatever if they can only be looked at through a peephole in the locked basement bathroom of a building set in the Alaskan tundra with sign on the door saying, "This property condemned ... Enter at your own risk."

Sean should be more concerned with expanding the number of people who know his work, see it, use it, and talk about it with others. Instead, he puts the major focus of his efforts into locking out potential thieves, cutting off honest users who might otherwise get fair value from it.

G
 

scott kirkpatrick

Well-known member
As I said before, if he doesn't trust me as his paying customer to use his material in the way that I might use ANY review material, available anywhere else, then why should I be bothered to deal with him?

Reviews are topical, short term bits of information that I want to be able to mine for data, annotate, and references in discussion. Reviews are of no value whatever if they can only be looked at through a peephole in the locked basement bathroom of a building set in the Alaskan tundra with sign on the door saying, "This property condemned ... Enter at your own risk."

Sean should be more concerned with expanding the number of people who know his work, see it, use it, and talk about it with others. Instead, he puts the major focus of his efforts into locking out potential thieves, cutting off honest users who might otherwise get fair value from it.

G
Godfrey, you've got a good point, that I suspect Sean really doesn't understand. He asks his subscribers not to say what is in his reviews, but the real value of a review is as a discussion-starter. And testing a review by comparing its results with the observations of others is, among other values, the only way to understand it.

scott
 

JonPB

New member
Godfrey, you've got a good point, that I suspect Sean really doesn't understand. He asks his subscribers not to say what is in his reviews, but the real value of a review is as a discussion-starter. And testing a review by comparing its results with the observations of others is, among other values, the only way to understand it.

scott
I see Mr. Reid as a photographer first, tester/reviewer second, and publisher a distant third. It appears to me that he is more interested in protecting his work from the flagrant dehumanization that occurs to most content that is posted publicly on the internet than in maximizing its monetary value. (This post, for example, will quickly be copied into databases by companies that seek to make money off any value I may have created, without my explicit consent or any consideration.) I think that European lawyers refer to that as "moral property," as opposed to real, chattel, or intellectual, and Reid seems to place more value in it than monetary profit. Yes, I'd prefer a different format for his work, but the value he creates is worth the hassle for me. It might not be for someone else. There's no right or wrong here, as we all have our own preferences with information sources just as we all go our own ways with cameras and lenses, and I think the same applies to his choices in running his own publication. There's nothing wrong with expressing disapproval or disagreement, of course, but claiming that he doesn't understand the ramifications of his choices seems like a stretch.

More on topic, I also find Egor's posts to be quite interesting. Both Egor's and Reid's content on the M 246 have something in common: they compartmentalize information reasonably well. That is, if you want to investigate a particular aspect of technical image quality, you can do so, but if you're not interested in the noise characteristics of a given setup from between one ISO and another, those sections are easy to skip without losing track of where the writer is going. Some of Egor's other posts are quite amusing and, like Reid though in a different manner, talk about the various aspects of their experiences in photography. I enjoy both their specific and general content. In a way, it feels like sharing a seminar experience with them, and I appreciate that.

As far as the M 246 itself goes, I'm very glad the camera exists--I might want to buy it someday--but it requires more skill than I have at anticipating what sort of filter would maximize a given scene. Personally, I've decided to focus my photography in the coming months on producing black and white images, so it has an incredible allure, but I think the learning curve would be too steep. Shooting the M 246 would be akin, for me, to starting off as a photographer with only a 24mm lens. Maybe someday my skills with B&W will improve to the point that I could effectively use such a tool, but as a relative newbie a more general purpose tool is better for me.

Cheers,
Jon
 

jlm

Workshop Member
i liked the comment that the leica was better at being a camera than egor was at being a photographer...spoken modestly enough
 
V

Vivek

Guest
When a brand is elevated like that then that is death for photography even when one gets its for free to write reviews. :(
 
Re: GrEGORy's review: Though I found it exhaustively prolix (which is a redundancy to mirror the article), I noticed a point that's been overlooked in the comments above about 12/14-bits:

He claims to have looked very carefully for reduction in midrange tonality as a result of the bit reduction. As Godfrey mentioned, you'd have to do a very technical analysis to be 'scientific' about this; but Egor is pretty darned sure there's no difference that's visible in prints.

I'm interested in pixel-peepin' only to the extent it applies to printed image quality, so this is a good omen – though I don't recall his saying what size prints he made and viewed (and I'm not going to wade through all those words again to check). I hope someone will check out his observation. My own concern is for prints on 17x22" paper.

Kirk
 
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jonoslack

Active member
Godfrey, you've got a good point, that I suspect Sean really doesn't understand. He asks his subscribers not to say what is in his reviews, but the real value of a review is as a discussion-starter. And testing a review by comparing its results with the observations of others is, among other values, the only way to understand it.

scott
HI Scott
I quite agree . . .but Sean doesn't want to be in internet discussions (which is why he keeps well out of them). He found it all too stressful - and having been at the receiving end of some pretty nasty comments (not here I have to say) I can see his point.


But there isn't really any security anywhere - you can just take a screenshot and there you are. So I still think he should make it iPad friendly.

all the best
 

jonoslack

Active member
Re: GrEGORy's review: Though I found it exhaustively prolix (which is a redundancy to mirror the article), I noticed a point that's been overlooked in the comments above about 12/14-bits:

He claims to have looked very carefully for reduction in midrange tonality as a result of the bit reduction. As Godfrey mentioned, you'd have to do a very technical analysis to be 'scientific' about this; but Egor is pretty darned sure there's no difference that's visible in prints.

I'm interested in pixel-peepin' only to the extent it applies to printed image quality, so this is a good omen – though I don't recall his saying what size prints he made and viewed (and I'm not going to wade through all those words again to check). I hope someone will check out his observation. My own concern is for prints on 17x22" paper.

Kirk
Hi There Kirk
ThighSlapper has done some printing on the LUF forum - he's very pleased.
 

jonoslack

Active member
When a brand is elevated like that then that is death for photography even when one gets its for free to write reviews. :(
HI Vivek
I really enjoyed Gregory's posts - however, I can see that they aren't to everyone's taste (which is fine).

But he hasn't got a camera for free for writing reviews (at least, not for more than a week or so!). I talk to him quite often, and I'm sure that this is the case. (Leica don't work like that anyway).

All the best
 
V

Vivek

Guest
Hi Jono,

How can anyone sell a camera when it is not announced and especially when they want to get feedbacks and with an embargo on saying anything publically about it until the release? It may be technically "on loan". Still I would not be paying even for shipping for such a camera with strings attached. It is a different matter when actually buying and owning a camera. These may the realities given the nature of the beast. Nothing more is implied. :)

I just do not like any tool (however cherished/useful it may be) being elevated to something more than what it is. If I have cash, I can pick up an MM2 and a set of my choice of optics to go with it. As simple as that. :)
 

Godfrey

Well-known member
Hi There Kirk
ThighSlapper has done some printing on the LUF forum - he's very pleased.
I recently replaced my old faithful Epson R2400 with a new P600. I have been testing print output ... I think my older cameras have all picked up another stop or so of dynamic range—printing on the same papers!—and a noticeable improvement in microcontrast as well.

It will be a joy to use the MM246 when it arrives, I'm sure. :)

G
 
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