Magazine Reviews

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Lenswork

I bought this once to read on a long airplane flight. It was desperation—I thought the magazine was going to be pretentious and desperately dull. If you've read the text to very many photo collections, or the articles in many fine art publications, you know what I'm talking about.

But I found Lenswork's articles and attitude to be refreshingly down to earth and accessible. The photographs (this is a fine-art periodical) are very well reproduced and striking.

The edition is smaller than normal, something like 6" x 5", so it tends to get lost on the magazine racks. I tend to find them mixed in with the photo books at bookstores, or in a special area for off-sized magazines at the news-stand. It's also pricey—$8.95 each for a bimonthly publication. If you choose to get it on CD-ROM it's cheaper (around $3.50 each).

The publishers also do the smartest thing I've seen from any magazine anywhere: they sell their back issues on CD in PDF format. PDF is an electronic format that can be viewed with a free reader from Adobe. The quality is very good—the next best thing to having the issue in your hands. You can check it out for yourself: they have a sample issue in PDF format that's a free download. I wish everyone did this. I'd love to have my magazines on CD—they're easier to view, easier to search, and far, far easier to store (I keep my photo magazines).

Synopsis

Pros: Great photo reproduction and thoughtful articles without being pretentious.

Cons: Slim, expensive and can be difficult to find.

Website: www.lenswork.com

Popular Photography

A tale of two magazines (and it won’t be the last, either). Popular began in the mid 1930s as a magazine devoted to hobbyists who wanted to know "how the pros do it." They printed articles of all kinds—equipment reviews, tips, techniques, profiles of all sorts. Mostly the same thing they do today.

Somewhere nearby, a rival magazine called Minicam Photography appeared, doing similar things but devoted mainly to 35mm camera (which used to be called "miniature" format). Over the years Minicam expanded its horizons and became Modern Photography, which lasted until the early 1990s.

Among my friends we split ourselves into Popular and Modern camps. They covered the same beat but they had distinctive looks and feels. I was a Modern fan and I acquired quite a collection of back issues. Modern’s strength was always its equipment reviews. Usually when a new SLR came out, Herbert Keppler would write a lengthy review of it in his "Keppler on the SLR" column, and then a couple months later it would show up again in greater depth in "Modern Tests." Between the two you got a lot of great information.

Then in the late 1980s something weird happened—the top people at Modern, Director Keppler and Editor Jason Schneider, among others, left and took over the same chores at Popular. Modern stumbled on a few more years and then went belly-up. Meanwhile the modernization of Popular began. They got Keppler's "SLR" column, Schneider's "Camera Collector" column, and soon added Steve Sint (large format). Popular’s tests began looking an awful lot like the old "Modern Tests." It was a strange case of a beloved magazine dying and living on in another name.

Popular Photography is still a mix of equipment reviews and techniques. It still has a lot of "how the pros do it!" articles, though they're usually very thin (Joe Smith suggests using the light of early morning of late afternoon—"they don't call it magic hour for nothing.") But the meat-and-potatoes is the equipment reviews, big and small.

On the other hand, Popular (as was Modern in its later years) stays on the camera side of life. You'll find comparisons of films, but forget about anything regarding paper, chemistry, darkroom equipment or printing techniques. The assumption (backed up by numerous articles on the subject) is that their readers take their films to photo labs (maybe I’m the only one who hates photo labs, but I don’t think so...) This is beginning to change because of desktop darkrooms like Photoshop, because nobody gets their hands wet in the pages of Popular.

Reading old back issues of Modern, it used to bug me how much they come to rely on stories of the latest camera or wingding to stick on it. Modern in the 60s used to have a gamut of columns, "Keppler on the SLR," "Caulfield (later Scully) on Color," "Wolfman on Printing," "Kramer's View (large format)," and so forth. Early on someone like Wolfman would write about actual printing technique; later it was always about whatever new paper or chemical was at the latest trade show.

Over time I realized it was simply because of the need to fill space. Imagine you’re a columnist hired to write a darkroom column. You write a dozen (a year’s worth) of columns and then what? What about year 3? Year 5? Year 10? One month it’s a relief to get a column out of something new at the trade shows or whatever gadget the visiting sales reps had. And pretty soon that becomes all there is to write about...

And so it is with Popular; I have a love/hate with Popular. I love the equipment reviews. I hate the fact that I often feel like I'm reading a brochure instead of a magazine, and that I feel like it's amazing I can get anything done with my decrepit, dumb, low-tech equipment.

Ah well—there are other magazines to fill in the gaps.

Synopsis

Pros: Equipment reviews are second to none.

Cons: Skin deep on teaching and techniques.

Website: www.popphoto.com

Petersen’s PHOTOgraphic

I call this Popular lite; not because of its content but because it looks so much thinner. Petersen’s covers mostly the same field as Popular, so if you do not like that magaine for whatever reason, you may find Petersen’s more to your liking—or vice versa.

It appears this magazine ceased publication as of December, 2005.

Synopsis

Pros and Cons: Pretty much the same as Popular Photography.

Website: www.photographic.com

PHOTO Techniques

Another tale of two magazines. Around 1979/1980, two magazines debuted to fill the very obvious niche of darkroom and fine-art printing that Popular and Modern ignored. One was Darkroom and the other Darkroom Techniques.

Even though they went after the same audience and both had easily confused titles, they had distinct personalities. In the early days, Darkroom Techniques read like a journal— very serious, weighty articles written by photographers. Darkroom’s articles and tone looked more like a mainstream magazine—articles written by photographers who could write well.

Over time they tended to meet in the middle. Darkroom’s articles got beefier and Darkroom Techniques became more readable by the laity. Darkroom had Ctein, Darkroom Techniques had Fred Picker.

Then something comical happened. Both magazines realized that they were fighting it out over a small niche market that was not big enough for the both of them. Darkroom changed its name to Camera & Darkroom and widened its coverage to the full art of photography, and to help distinguish itself from Darkroom Techniques on the newsstand; Darkroom Techniques changed its name to Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques for much the same reason. They both benefitted by widening their horizons, as they applied their intelligence and depth of coverage to subjects that were glossed over by Popular and Modern. But the changes in names did not make them any easier to tell apart on the newsstand.

Then the next round—Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques changed its name again to Photo Techniques. Camera & Darkroom sadly, could not come up with a new name and ceased publishing instead.

Photo Techniques did it right—they gleaned off much of the best from the late lamented Camera & Darkroom (such as Ctein) and solidified their spot on the newsstand, but still held on to the best they had to offer before—substantive articles for advanced photographers.

I can make my point by simply mentioning what a reader might find in a typical issue: Robert Chapman's wonderful "Photochemistry" column, "Master Printing Class"—a look at how a negative is printed (in steps) to create a fine print, a test on the a new paper or film, some very good articles on using Photoshop, and sometimes a how-to article such as "Make Your Own Ground Glass." Occasionally there is something fantastic, such an article on bokeh. Don't know what bokeh is? Find a copy of Volume 18, No 3 (May/June 1997).

Synopsis

Pros: The best on the art and craft of fine art photography.

Cons: Assumes a certain level of competence—not for beginners.

Website: www.phototechmag.com

Shutterbug

Like most people, I grumble about the large number of advertisements in magazines. Most magazines, Popular in particular, always seemed to have more ads than content. Yet I spent far more time than I want to think about reading those pages and pages and pages of ads in tiny little print from places like Spiratone and Olden and Cambridge Camera and B&H and Executive and Wall Street and Olympic and Freestyle. And then I found Shutterbug Ads.

Now in my day (illustrated by shaking my cane), Shutterbug Ads was a folio-sized monster and it was full of those ads, except that the shear physical size of the beast allowed them to print the ads bigger so that I didn't need a magnifying glass to see the dreaded "CALL" next to whatever it was I was dreaming about. And not just bigger—more of them. An advertiser who ran four pages in four pages in Popular might run a dozen in Shutterbug Ads. And then there was a world more—All Seasons Camera, Bill Cameta, Eddie and Richard Tillis, Midwest Photo Exchange.

And then there were the classifieds, though that was dying by the time I subscribed. Used to be small parties bought and sold (particularly the niche areas, like stereo) through these classifieds. You could write to them and get on a monthly mailing list—a typewritten sheet listing the latest inventory and prices.

But Shutterbug Ads was printed on paper roughly equivalent to the stuff they make grocery bags out of, which was fine for advertising but terrible for the fodder they threw in front. I always felt sorry for the people who were trying to illustrate a column on, say, highlight control because the before and after examples were printed so badly they were virtually indistinguishable. I never knew anyone who read those articles. People bought it for the ads.

Of course this is the sort of thing that the internet killed. As a lot of these guys developed their websites, where they could have example photos, smart browsing and searching, and up-to-the-minute inventory lists and pricing, advertising in Shutterbug Ads lost a lot of its lustre. And for people like me—why should I buy Shutterbug Ads if I can visit the websites directly for free?

I looked at a recent issue so that I could write this review, and I was surprised to see the changes. The format is down to (I think) A5, which makes it still larger than the rest, but not by much. Gone is that gargantuan size and heft. Gone are the legions of advertisers on cheap paper. Gone even was the cheap paper—they now use that slick color paper the other mass-market magazines use. I flipped through it and it appeared to be all the same stuff as I see in Popular and appears to have taken the place of Petersen’s PHOTOgraphic. It's now just Shutterbug.

Synopsis

Pros: Pretty much the same as Popular but slimmer.

Cons: Lost its niche.

Website: www.shutterbug.net

Stereo World

If you have read much of this website, you've probably figured out that I like stereo photography—3D photography. This is the only magazine that I'm aware of that's devoted to the subject—at least that's currently in print (club newsletters don't count).

Stereo World is just that—a journal of all things stereoscopic, and they're very good about cutting a wide swath in each issue. I've got Volume 30, Number 2 (Summer of 2004) popped open here as I type this, and these are the feature articles: "Bring Stereo Exhibits to a theater near you" (about a travelling stereo photo exhibition and how you can do the same), "Bollywood 3D Film to Premier at NSA 2004" (about an Indian 3D movie), "Unseen Ellis Island" (a colletion of stereo graphs of the famous US port of entry in its current state of decay), "New Views" (featurelets about new books, products and services), "NSA 2004 Portland" (about this year's annual convention), "In the Driver's Seat" (about the filming of an Imax movie called Nascar 3D), and "The Photographic Journey of John Cramb to Palestine in 1860" (views and comments about the photographer and his trip to the Holy Land). Plus the normal stuff you find in magazines, plus advertisements that you won't find anywhere else, because stereo photography is such a small niche market.

This is a full-sized magazine printed on slick paper, and is a mix of color and B&W. Most photos are presented as stereo pairs, and initial subscribers get a hand-held viewer with their first issue. This is a product of the National Stereoscopic Association, so you have to join to get the subscription—or you get a membership when you subscribe—depending on how you want to look at it. The magazine is bi-monthly, averages about 40 pages (which looks smaller here than it does when you get the magazine itself. Plus consider that the magazine is 75% meat and 25% ads, whereas a mass-market magazine like Popular Photography is the reverse). And because stereo photography is a tiny niche market, chances are you'll never see it at your library or newsstand—you have to subscribe or buy single issues through the NSA.

Personally—I think it's worth it. The articles are far better than what I'd expect. The magazine looks and reads better than most magazines with far higher circulations. If you are interested at all in stereo photography, this is a must-see magazine.

Synopsis

Pros: Very well done, and the only magazine devoted to stereo photography.

Cons: Nearly impossible to get unless you subscribe, and not exactly cheap.

Website: www.stereoview.org/stereoworld.html

View Camera

This one is hard to find. I lived in Sacramento where the publisher is located, so the local bookstores tended to carry it. View Camera is a lot like Photo Techniques except the niche is large format. Articles are about anything of interest within the niche—from portfolios of photographers who shoot in the format to product reviews to techniques of all kinds.

View Camera is one of those magazines that is expensive and slender, but the money is visible—it is printed in higher grade stock than mass market magazines so the images are far, far better. The writing, however, is uneven: shades of the early days of Darkroom Techniques.

I have not seen recent issues—they are too hard to find and, with money being tight, I can only maintain a certain number of magazine subscriptions—so I do not know whether new issues are covering digital (beyond reviews of digital backs).

Synopsis

Pros: The best if you love large format.

Cons: Not for beginners, and slender pickings for those not into large format.

Website: www.viewcamera.com

©opyright by James Ollinger All rights reserved.