[Leica] Mike Johnston, Bokeh, Pentax

[Stephen Gandy <Stephen@CameraQuest.com>]

I got the email below from Mike Johnston,  which he submitted to the Pentax
list.  I think it has some interesting issues worth considering.    I share his
sentiments, except those specific to Pentax which I have very little experience
with.  Mike also confirmed he is no longer editor of Photo Tech, but that more
photo articles as well as photo books will be in the works.

Stephen Gandy


>>>Why did you choose Pentax?...Really, why Pentax?<<<

I'll answer this, if only to help get the list back to some sort of
focus on Pentaxiana and away from what sounds like a late-night
discussion in a dormitory hallway with plastic beer cups in hand.
(Metaphysics indeed <g>.)

The lenses. Specifically, the manual-focus 50mm lenses, specifically the
50/1.4s.

In 1997 I helped introduce a new term into the lexicon of North American
photographers: "bokeh," which was my own rendering of a katakana term
more properly romanized as _bo-ke_ or boke (a spelling which provoked a
hail of puns and jokes on a pronunciation that was totally incorrect).
It's the Japanese word meaning "blur," specifically the visual
properties of the way a lens renders out-of-focus areas in pictures.
_PHOTO Techniques_ presented three articles on the subject: "What is
'Bokeh'?" By John Kennerdell, an American-born photographer based in
Bangkok; "Notes on the Terminology of Bokeh" by Oren Grad, an M.D. /
Ph.D. researcher at Abt Associates in Cambridge, MA; and "A Technical
View of Bokeh" by Harold Merklinger, who is Senior Scientist at the
Canadian Defense Establishment Atlantic in Halifax, N.S.

Thereafter, I got rather obsessed with investigating the bokeh
properties of various lenses and how they function in pictures. This has
dovetailed into my growing understanding of how lenses render, which in
turn has made me dissatisfied with using "any old lens." I am, in short,
an inveterate, die-hard, unregenrate lens connoisseur. It's my own
quirky little tributary off the mainstream of photography.

Bokeh can vary:
    --in front and in back of the plane of focus
    --with aperture
    --with focusing distance
    --on or off the optical axis
    --with the distance of the out-of-focus objects from the plane of
focus
    --with the contrast of the out-of-focus objects
        and
    --in visual character.

This is the short version <g>.

As I've explored the visual properties of the way lenses render, it's
gotten clearer than simple explanations of lenses' performance are
inadequate. A lens _balances_ a large number of technical properties:
apparent sharpness on the plane of focus, a good match between optical
resolution and film resolution, on- vs. off-axis performance (i.e.,
center vs. corners), flare characteristics (far more important than most
photographers realize) and bokeh. And several dozen other properties.

So what I've looked for is a lens that is exceptional in some of its
properties and not too bad in others. What I look for in a lens are
quite different from the relatively simpler things that many
photographers respond to.

This also merges with another strain in my personal "philosophy" in
recent years, which is that, after six years of editing a magazine about
photo techniques, I'm sick of photo techniques <g>. More precisely, I'm
more unconvinced than ever that what many photographers seem to be
searching for--an impressive technique that will distinguish their work
or make their pictures "special"--matters in photographs. Consequently,
I've gone the other way, gradually removing all the "specialness" from
my own technique. What I'm headed for is approximately what Eugene
Herrigel describes in _Zen and the Art of Archery_...a gradual return to
practicing as freely and thoughtlessly a beginner, but having come
through a full and profound knowledge of every aspect of that practice.

In other words, my preferred technique looks very much like what I was
taught in Photo 101 twenty years ago, except that now I have a far
better understanding of it. <s>

I suspect with me there's one more thing going on, and it's essentially
psychological. They say that men as they age generally tend to stick to
the hairstyle they wore when they were 25 for the rest of their lives.
Well, I tend to like the way cameras were back when *I* was 25: metal,
relatively non-electronic, relatively simple-to-operate Japanese SLRs.
I'm just comfortable with them and I enjoy them. I especially like the
pleasing, solid construction of well-built manual focus lenses.

Pentax satisfies all the parameters for me. Lenses that have what I look
for, a certain thoroughgoing "plainness" or lack of exoticism, and
they're a mainstream expression of the style of cameras common in my
youth.

What's not to like?

- --Mike