Unsharp Practice

I continue to be intrigued by the Canon Zoom monocular. Somehow the combination of ultra-pocketability with a tiny sensor and a crazy zoom which result in hilariously bad JPEG files can nonetheless yield pictures that (with some artful post-processing) I, at least, find attractive. Although I've tried, I simply can't reproduce the same effect with "better" cameras and lenses. [1]  The Zoom is not for everyone, obviously – no scope for boasting about "sharpness" here! – but in the right circumstances and with a bit of work it delivers images with certain pictorial qualities that, for me, outweigh the standard metrics of photographic excellence.

Sales of this unique device must have been poor, though, otherwise I'm sure Canon would have revisited it by now, and improved it somewhat. I mean, how much work would it take the engineers at Canon to knock off the obvious rough edges? Not much, but too much, it seems. Never mind, it's fun to use and, like any good puzzle, offers the sort of stimulating challenge that is more satisfying than being handed a result on a plate. Most of the time, anyway...

Another farewell BTW: John Blakemore has died. The fullest account of his career and influence I've seen so far is here on PetaPixel, but doubtless there'll be others. Blakemore was a massively influential figure in the British art photography scene during what I think of as the "darkroom and workshop" era, alongside other practitioner-educators like Fay Godwin, Raymond Moore, and Paul Hill. If you don't know his work, check it out: there's a nice video, Seduced by Light, here. I like this quote from an interview with him:

"But at the end of the day, there’s a lot of bits of paper in boxes," Blakemore laughed, smiling broadly. "And that’s a suitable end, isn’t it?"

Yep, that's about it. The wisdom and the fun is all in the making of them. Pity the person who inherits all those boxes.

1. For example a Panasonic micro 4/3 body with a 45-200mm lens attached (90-400mm in 35mm terms), or even a Panasonic TZ70 "superzoom" compact, with its own tiny sensor and mad 30x zoom (24-720mm in 35mm terms).