pete mcgovern

Nick Carver's light but Lewis Baltz tidied up.

Nick Carver has one of the most entertaining photography channels. For a lot of us the occasions a video arrives are immediately good online days. His world is one of funny photographic jaunts resulting invariably in atmospheric pictures of quirky subjects, such as closed down vintage food chain buildings around his home State in western US. His latest post was, unusually, a digital camera review and a walk-along on his day job using it - architectural real estate work . It was interesting to see what he came up with when fulfilling someone else's brief but aside from the honed professional building interior and exteriors, there was this luminous moment of beauty:

Bettina Grossman. ULRIYK gallery, NY

I recently rescued a  vintage Olympus C-5050. Considering its age and specs it's well beyond any reasonable usefulness end date, and some functionality has already been lost along the way. Disarmingly, it looks like it was designed by a drunk. Small but weighty, built around a magnesium alloy frame, with, for the time, a bright f1.8 lens that drinks in the light. Which is useful, as even at base ISO 64 there is some hint of noise, and the range only goes to 400 which is sketchy. I like the way it sits around waiting to go out and look for pictures for the simple pleasure of it. So, this decades old machine, like some discarded one-eyed old mutt, gets to go for walks again of a summer evening, (at least until some component failure brings about final darkness), to enjoy a lingering look around the little world of my local neighbourhood.

After picking up an obsolete but wonderful Nikon D810 last year (mint but carrying with dignified silence the wear of 2.3 million exposures, having previously been nestled in an automated QC rig in a high-end car plant). I got an analogue-era lens for the hole at the front and now that I've used it a bit am in awe of its resolving power (particularly at or above f8). It's chunky and a bit clunky but looking into that wide eye, and its wondrous depths, I feel I am poised above a still pool of water cupped by a mountain with the impulse to dive in, with my clothes on, apart from my shoes and socks, of course. It looks so clear in there but I'm sure it's going to be freezing. 

For what it's worth. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Sort of, maybe. A rough and ready head to head between a vintage Kodak CCD sensor (Olympus C-5050) and two CMOS (Sony P&S and Nikon D810), with their varying physical sizes, pixel density, colour science processing, lenses, and my slightly varied individual settings to muddle things up a bit more, etc. Fairly bright overcast light, mid day in May. Everything auto and OOC jpegs. Quite a busy street, juggling cameras, and a concerned looking shopkeeper wondering what I was up to hence framing a bit awry. DYOR, and it is what is is , as Beth at work used to say in her philosophical moments, or  All Apologies as per Kurt Cobain. RIP you sad, silly, lonely young man. No refunds. SPOILER ALERT (for other camera nerds who pass by this way) For reference, photo details below, but I'd suggest looking only after making your own assessment of the colour differences as otherwise it will be impossible to review impartialy:  ...