Shyheels

As a frequent and creative user of ambiguity, I think it is a fine thing and am delighted by how regularly one finds opportunities to use it to good effect. Like the air we breathe, ambiguity is everywhere. Long may it be so. I might add that 'yes' or 'no' answers are not always a good thing either, even - I might even say especially - when one personally wants to be clear of any ambiguity. I have travelled much in Africa and have learned never to ask questions that can be answered with just a 'yes' or a 'no'. Locals there - many of them anyway - like to be agreeable to foreigners and very often say 'yes;' to anything. Is this the bus to Douala? Yes. Is this the bus to Yaounde? Yes. Does it leave at 2 o'clock? Yes? Does it leave at four? Yes. I like to have my cake and eat it too

I've no idea what ever happened to the pretty red haired girl who wore the go-go boots. A grandmother by now, no doubt. As for me I just like the elegance of long boots, especially suede. And, having worn them now, the comfort and warmth, especially on chilly autumn and winter days when I am at the computer. Ah yes, pics. As a photographer I am far more at home behind the camera than in front of it...

M&S website is pretty useless to order from...

I remember a very pretty red haired girl in my class (circa 1970) who often wore white go-go boots to school. I liked her (from afar) and I liked the dash she cut with thise boots. I wanted a pair too, not really comprehending at first, in those age if Aquarius days of softer gender lines in fashion that what I wanted were girl's boots and therefore 'forbidden'. I was really quite embarrassed when the penny finally dropped and I shoved such things out of my mind and began distrusting my tastes and sense of style and sought the saftey that is found in always following the herd. Not a good thing. I had no interest whatever in women's shoes and still don't have any interest at all. I liked boots, but without ever being obsessed. When autumn would roll around though I would feel wistful that tall fashion boots were not permissible for guys and wished that I could have and wear a pair. Because of the strong association with tall boots and women, I linked them with heels. The funny thing is, though, now that I have given myself permission to have and wear a pair of nice otk boots, I realise that the heels had little to do with it. I find flat otk boots equally, perhaps even more, appealing.

I think you really should shoot RAW or at the very least acquaint yourself with the possibilities it opens up for post processing. I really do not know much about the capabilities of low and medium range cameras, at least not first hand, but all of the pro grade cameras I use or am familiar with are superior is every respect to film. Again I go back to client demands. If film were better, they would want it.. They don't. There is just no demand. the convenience of digital is nice, but in advertising, art, architecture and longer term magazine orojects there are no rush deadlnes. Clients would be more than happy to wait for images to be processed if it was a matter if getting truly better images. That they go with digital over film speaks for itself. i too used to have medium format cameras - a Pentas 6x7 and a Mamiya RB67. Loved em both. Sold them both long ago, too. Most other pros I know sld their medium format gear too. Digital is just better and where medium format sized shot are required, digital medium firmat such as Phase One, Hassleblad etc fill the bill. Almost nobody uses film. large format, 4x5 and 8x10, for landscapes and studio, can outperform digital on resolution but that is because there is very little cmpetition at that end of the spectrum. I have been in this game a long time, and just cannot think of any good reason to shoot film any more other than nostalgia. And nostalgia, as they say, ain't what it used to be! :-)

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. Clients, at least the ones I work for, one of which is world famous for its demands on photographers and the quality of the images they use, are not about instant gratification but about quality in the most absolute sense. They were late in moving to digital, not touching it until 2003 but now use nothing else. Time is not a factor. Just image quality - which includes, I would add, emphatically, the artistry, compositional sense, integrity and journalistic story telling ability of the photographer.

There are plenty of retro lovers who are keen to try new things such as film and being swept away by the novelty of it all will see whatever they want to see. Film is not superior to digital. It just isn't. If it was, the clients and magazines for which I shoot would be insisting on it - I mean it when I say they are some of the world's most demanding and have budgets to get whatever they like. If they wanted film - if they believed it was superior - that's what I and other pros would be shooting. We would do it for the clients sake if nothing else, because they pay the bills. But nobody is calling for it. And if they did want a film-like effect, there are some very good top-end software packages that can deliver that same result - on digital. A colleague of mine recently did a travelling exhibition that went around Asia. Some of the work in there went back into the 90s and was shot on film. It was - and is - very nice stuff but you can see which ones were shot on film and, technically, sad to say, they are weaker. I am talking subtleties here, because these are all beautiful images, but digital offers better colour, clarity, dynamic range and resolution (with the notable exception, for resolution, of stuff shot on large-format 4x5 or 8x10) It is certainly true that the overwhelming number of iconic images in the 20th century were shot on film (how could it be otherwise? Digital didn't reach mainstream use until the late 90s and most magazines didn't go to digital until the early 2000s) and that those images resonate powerfully today and will continue to do so. That they do is due to the artistry, humanism and compositional talents of the photographer, not to any technical superiority of film or the cameras of the day. Many of the great shots seem grainy and soft - some almost unacceptably so, today - but that does not detract from their power. But neither does that make film a technically superior medium to digital. Also many of those iconic images we might be thinking about - and a special mention here to Ansel Adams - are the product of much manipulation in the darkroom, easily the equivalent of what a modern digital photographer would do on his desktop with Lightroom or Photoshop. Some people may find that their involvement with processing film, the chemicals and darkroom work and the slowness with which images are created with film gives them a deeper satisfaction and sense of creation, but that is within them. Nothing bad or wrong with that, but it is not absolute or universal.

I don't know what your parameters would be for this contest but if you were using that camera to compete against ANY digital set up, as you say, you would be up against Hassleblad, Leica, Phase One, in terms of medium format, and the Leica, Nikon 800 and Canon 1DX and 5D series in 35mm and with their modern lenses, dynamic range, low light capabilities and resolution, not to mention the refining, sharpening, colour correction and exposure adjustment possibilities open to the digital images (shot in RAW) in postprocessing, I simply can't see that as being anything ither than a lopsided, one-way contest with Digital the only possible winner. Similarily I do not understand how you come up with the idea that the pictured camera's beating any digital camera in terms of economy since digital has no film or development costs - a huge savings to digital, and one that, what's more, has allowed a vast number of people to develop talent they might never otherwise have discovered since they have the freedom now to shoot at will, experiment, learn without having to count the cost. It us liberating. But that is another argument. The only area where I concede film still has an advantage is in large-format landscape photography - 4x5 or 8x10. But even this is being eroded.

First of all the low quality of the lens on your imaginary £50 film camera is going to render any comparison with the lens on a £1000 digital meaningless. The quality of the lens has a strong bearing on colour rendition. Were you to make accurate meaningful comparisons you would need like-on-like. Next, in terms of film, comes the issue of matching the correct film with the subject and light. Again a variable. With digital, are you shooting jpeg or RAW? Jpeg discards about 80% of the data acquired by the sensor while RAW stores it away and allows you to make infinite colour corrections in post processing - assuming of course the photographer knows something about colour science and the software he/she is using. there are plenty of colour and white balance cards you can use to ensure you are picking up colours correctly in camera. In terms of matching colour accurately to different screens tyere are a lot of color correcting gadgets and software on the market and the use of them should make colours appear consistently from ine colour corrected screen to another. lastly there are variables in the human eye. i shoot for clients who are exceptionally concerned with quality, colour and light (in addition, of course to composition) If ut were a simple matter of grabbing a £50 film camera and solving all our problems with that, we'd be doing it!

We'll need long necks to maintain the proper decorum of bowing and hat-tipping,

Interesting, as you say, and clearly they have tapped into a latent demand, but in looking over the article and, more particularly the photos, I would be very much leaning towards the latter interpretation.

Two monsters! :-)

Indubitably

Entirely possible to get true colours in digital too. Better and truer than on film. i do have some very nice kit, but bear in mind, too, that these are work tools.

Alphonse and Gaston

Very cleansing, I gather

Cartier-Bressn is one of my heroes too. I use a full-frame Canon 5D3 with Zeiss primes and the resolution and colour is unreal. The 5D3 is famous for its low light capabilities with ISO3200 easily usable in critical applications and often ISO6400 is usable as well. The new version of the 5D, which I hope to pick up in the next few months, has 50MP - enough resolution even to test the Zeiss lenses and the new generation of Canon L-series lenses.

Italian sizing frequently crops up in cycling clothes which means you need to go straight to the XXL to have even a ghost of a chance of getting into it.

Interesting that such a (relatively) large size sells out so quickly. Either they make very damn few of them in size 8 or there are more people with (relatively) larger feet that Mr Zara thinks there are.

Sounds like you could have a very pleasant Christmas! Those are very nice looking boots, and in suede. I can understand why you would have been at such pains to chase down the size eight. I hope they fit you.

I learned photography back in the 1970s and loved the time I spent in the darkroom. I could disappear into the university's darkroom for hours, emerging only to head out with my camera once more, either up into the mountains or along raffishly cool neon-lit Central Avenue in Albuquerque where I was living at the time and which was a last vestige of the original Route 66. Much as I loved my time in the darkroom, and benefitted from it, I would never go back to film. I am a wholehearted convert to digital. When was the last time you could go out and take pin sharp photos at ISO6400, as I can with my present camera. Back in the day you were going some to push Tri-X to 1600 and that was grainy as hell. I'm not bad at portraiture, which is good as I have an assignment coming up in Africa where portraiture is going to figure heavily!

A raffish alternative to Lycra for cycling!

I saw an article mentioning Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and George 'Dubya' Bush. They are all heels. Does that count? :-)

I am a photographer and my most important images are backed up, and in the cloud, and copies are with my agency who in turn have their own back ups. I like to think I am safe, but I still worry. i know little about computers or computing, only what the storage capacity is. My laptop is like a glorifued typewriter and photo editing machine. As long as it fulfills those two functions I don't ask too many questions!

Congratulations! Persistence pays off.