What is nothing? Is there even such a thing as ‘nothing’? And if there is such a thing then it’s something, right?
Now I could get spiritual on you and talk about emptiness as the doorway between the material and ethereal worlds, that only through emptiness can we experience fullness but even I have trouble keeping a straight face with all of that stuff.
One thing’s for sure though… Australia has a whole lot of emptiness. It’s everywhere. The hard part is making it interesting.
It was Australia Day 2023 and I’m walking the tracks around the back of the caravan park at Leeman, a small town two and half hours north of Perth experiencing the richness of emptiness.
The Emptiness of Australia
Now before you tell me that it’s not empty, I know that. I’ve seen the David Attenborough series where he shows you termites thriving in the Alaskan tundra. And I’m also the first to acknowledge that I have a tendency to see the world through European eyes. I’m looking for quaint Welsh cottages dwarfed by the majesty of Snowdonia and there really isn’t much of that here.
It’s not empty. The traditional custodians of this land know that. This is a culture that has names six Australian seasons while I struggle with ‘hot’ and ‘bloody hot’.
But since it’s Australia Day I’m going to try and capitalise on the fact that I live in this amazing country. After all, Australia has 60 different wine regions, so it’s not like we lack diversity, at least when it comes to getting drunk.
And one of the things that I do love is minimalism, and the good thing about nothing is that it provides a great backdrop for something.
Before you get your hopes up for austere and tasteful photographs of a lonely cloud floating over vale or hill, or even a solitary tree breaking the serene landscape, you might just want to notice that the vegetation is pretty scrubby and messy, the light was casting shadows and I picked Australia Day to shoot this video which is perhaps the busiest this place gets. It’s amazing how hard it is to find nothing when you’re looking for it.
Perhaps the problem is that I’m very familiar with Leeman and have become blind to what’s around me. All the variegations and corrugations of a small town nestled on the coast can be lost in the expanse of sand, scrub and sky until you actually place a camera in front of your eye and start to look closely.
The Humble Nikon N55
For an empty landscape, I had a nothing camera. The Nikon N55 is not a workhorse tool. In fact, this is my third one, having picked up several over the years that have been selling literally for the price of a cup of coffee and lasted just about as long. Two of them ended up suffering from electronic issues relating to autofocus, though this one has lasted a few years now. As of 2023, you can still pick up one of these for less than $100 and if you’re patient, you might even be able to get one with a lens.
So why do I have a soft spot for this camera? Well, it’s super light with the lens I used, even lighter with the 28-80mm kit lens it came with. And it’s not like I have to worry about someone mugging me or really even noticing me, it’s so unobtrusive.
The Even Humbler Nikon 35-70m f/3.3-4.5
This particular lens has a fairly ignominious reputation. The optical formula is based on the previous manual version, manufactured at a time when zoom lenses just weren’t that good. You get a limited range, moderate aperture and mediocre optics. Look, it’s not that sharp but it’s sharp enough. The bokeh isn’t beautiful but you can still separate the background. It distorts throughout the zoom range but particularly at the wide end and suffers chromatic aberration at wide apertures. But you can fix that later. And It flairs more than a JJ Abrams star trek movie but just don’t point it into the sun.
It’s probably about the cheapest Nikon lens you can buy. The fact is, the build quality of the autofocus version is pretty good and it pairs really well with this camera. One of the biggest limitations of the Nikon N or F 55 is that it won’t meter with manual lenses at all and it won’t focus with AFS lenses that have the focus motor built in. But for these older screw drive lenses this works great. In fact, in good light, the short focus throw makes this particular lens quite fast to lock on to your subject.
And it’s loud. Certainly not discreet at all but be honest, you’re not a professional wedding photographer taking photos at the ceremony nor are you worried about scaring away that curious but skittish aardvark approaching your hide in the African savannah. Remember, this video is about photographing nothing and.. just maybe… a nothing camera is the best tool for that!?
I will begin this article with a quick disclaimer. I am NOT a wildlife photographer.
Wildlife photography requires lightning sharp reflexes and a good knowledge of your subject matter. My reflexes are like molasses and while I know my camera pretty well, I’m not used to wielding a long lens. And my understanding of wildlife reflects both my ignorance and complete lack of interest in anything remotely resembling ‘nature’.
I’ve spent my whole life avoiding birds and plants. There’s something about birds in particular. The way they fix you with those beadie little eyes. That quiet prehistoric malevolence, you know they’re just waiting for a chance to attack. I’ve seen the Hitchcock movie.
So moderate your expectations before you settle in. It’s not that I’m dismissive of the genre. There is definitely something special about wildlife photographers and I love experiencing their forays through nature, vicariously at least, on YouTUBE. There’s something calming about the way they can just sit there in a hide waiting for something to happen while munching on their apples and egg and cress sandwiches. Sure I can slash through the undergrowth with my sigma like it’s a machete and I am the right age and gender – and actually my wife can make a pretty mean salad roll but I have neither knowledge, nor patience, so I’ll leave the flora and fauna philosophy to those far more experienced than I am. Instead, I will just describe my own personal experience using a Sigma 170-500mm f/5-6.3 DG APO lens, trying to capture the wildlife of Lake Monger in Perth, Western Australia.
About the Sigma 170-500mm f/5-6.3 DG APO
So what can we say about the Sigma 170-500mm f/5-6.3? Firstly… yes, it’s slow. It has an aperture smaller than the eye of a needle and it focuses glacially, loping backwards and forwards like me trying to learn to samba.
But it’s sharp enough when it finally finds its subject. The lens is apochromatic, which is what scientists say to sound cool and basically means that the glass elements focus in such a way that the individual colours don’t smear to create that horrible colour fringing you see in some high contrast scenarios, like shooting leaves with the sun behind them. All made possible by an aspherical lens and three special low dispersion or SLD lenses. But let’s forget the spec sheet, what’s it like in the hand?
Well yes, it’s big. Robust and manly in appearance with hard plastic ridges and a sense of purpose, that purpose being ‘I’m going to be as indiscreet as possible as I try to take photos through the motel window to blackmail you with later’. It’s not one to take to your daughter’s netball game.
It also trombones badly when you want reach and with no focus lock, it suffers badly from zoom creep when hanging down. Insert gratuitous penis joke here.
Anyway, it’s not a discreet lens, which is a shame because it’s surprisingly light. About 1.3 kilos, I was able to sling it over my shoulder happily for a couple of hours and handhold all of my shots.
Pros and Cons
One negative is obviously the size and it has an 86mm filter thread so if I were to buy a polariser for this thing it would probably cost as much as the lens itself.
The small aperture combines with another negative – It doesn’t have Vibration Reduction. That means if you’re zoomed in to 500mm you’re probably going to want to shoot at a shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second. The way I dealt with that was I shot Ilford HP5 pushed to ISO 1600 on a sunny day so it wasn’t an issue. It also brought a bit of contrast and crunch to the images that probably added to the perceptual sharpness.
That said, I’d say the sharpness of this lens is already a pro. While it’s not going to even approach the sharpness of a Nikon 70-200 f/2.8, that doesn’t have the focal range that this does. Same with a 300-500mm focal length. You get the reach but you’re stuck if you want to rack back to something closer. And you can forget carrying both of those out into the field with you. That’s not even considering the cost of two high end zooms.
This lens gets mixed reviews. If you look online you’ll find people saying not sharp beyond 300mm. Others say, use a sturdy tripod and find critical focus of a slow moving subject and it’s a razor. I tend to side with the latter. But it highlights the fact that you need good technique to be able to get the most out of this or any other vintage long telephoto zoom for that matter.
One thing’s for sure, It’s a dream on the Nikon N65. It’s like the camera this lens was made for each other, particularly with include an MB-17 battery grip accessory. I didn’t have it with me on the day and I probably should have – the grip makes you look a bit pro, whereas this just looks kinda daft. I didn’t really feel I needed it, though, and it made for a lighter and leas threatening set up.
Recommendation
Should you get this lens? Sure, if you can find it at a good price. I worry a bit that this blog is turning into a forum for me to brag about how cheap I am but it probably pays to be patient if you’re looking. It’s a solid lens but the bulk, build quality, screw focusing and lack of VR mean it doesn’t always get the love it deserves and you might find it cheap. For me in 2022 that was around AU$200, though it tends to go for more on eBay.
As for wildlife photography… I’d like to get better at it. I DO need to develop a bit more patience, though. Give me 30 years and I mightget there.
When I do, God help me, I’ll be one of ‘those’ photographers. I’ve actually been eying of a beige tactical vest on Ali Express that I’m sure is designed for people who want to shoot up high schools but I can really see myself slipping a lens cap, spare battery and muesli bar into the pockets and hunting down that perfect sea egret. I just plan to keep challenging myself. I do think trying other genres, even if you’re not good at them is how you grow as a photographer.
If you do want to witness my growth (and I’m not talking about lens size here) then keep reading this blog and subscribe to me here and on YouTube.
This is something of a tongue-in-cheek post. Don’t expect an in depth discussion about whether photography is art. I think that debate is settled now. I’m also not going to claim that all photography is art – my snapshot of a brick wall is not the same as Jeff Wall and my Martin is definitely sub Parr.
But if I learnt anything through years of getting my PhD it’s that stringing together a few well chosen quotes can be a adequate substitute for a coherent thesis.
What is Art?
It was Aristotle who said ‘Art completes what nature cannot bring to a finish. The artist gives us knowledge of nature’s unrealised ends.’ And that’s always resonated with me. Firstly because it makes us sound almost Godlike in that we’re somehow improving on what’s actually there. But secondly, it acknowledges that nature is messy and complex and there’s something about photography that is consciously selective, reductive even and that rationalisation can make you see things in new ways.
I know in my own photography I find myself constantly trying to remove things from the scene, to impose my own need for order on it. It’s probably why I photograph the built environment more than nature. Nature is pretty chaotic and meaningless really.
So Art can transcend nature but but what does it tell us? Is it a harbinger of truth? Picasso said, ‘Art is a lie that makes us realise truth’. But then Theodore Adorno argued, ‘Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.’ Then again, Marcel Duchamp characterised Art as, ‘the missing link. Not the links which exist. It’s not what you see that is Art; art is the gap.’
So Art is everything and nothing, a truth that lies and a lie that is true. You’ve got to wonder if artists are taking the piss, probably literally in Duchamp’s case given that his most famous work is a urinal.
But like Duchamp’s fountain, there is something about art that lasts beyond the moment in which it was created.
According to Hypocrates, Art is long, life is short. ‘Ars Longa, Vita Brevis’. The work stands beyond the person that makes it. They are the creative spawn, the legacy that we leave for others.
Speaking of spawn, over the years, I’ve I mated with lots of cameras – I’m kind of a photographic floozy, a streetwalker, literally, making picture babies, all with various DNA combinations and an inherent lack of consistency and style.
And it makes sense that the camera you use is going to influence the end product. Oils and a spatula are going to make a different picture than a brush and watercolours. Similarly, the work you produce is a reflection of where you are, when you are and who you are. It’s the interplay of light, subject, and your own life and vision.
Edvard Munch is quoted as saying, ‘What is art? Art grows out of grief and joy, but mainly grief.
Yes, I have suffered for my art. And now it’s your turn.
But first, let me introduce you to the camera. Bertholdt Brecht supposedly said, ‘Art is not a mirror held up to reality but a hammer with which to shape it.’ Today’s hammer of choice is the Olympus C-4000Z.
About the Olympus C-4000 Zoom
This arrived 2002 and is not the first in its class. It followed the very successful C-2000, C-2020, and the C-3020Z, that came a year before this one. It also has a slightly higher end stable mate the C-4040 Zoom that has an f/1.8 lens.
The Olympus C-4000 Zoom isn’t the first camera of it’s kind but follows a trusted design formula
The C-4000 was US$499 on release, I picked this one up 2nd hand for AU$20. That makes me smile, though I’m still looking for that leica in my local charity store.
Back to the lens, though. No f/1.8 here. This one goes from f/2.8 to f/11 and has a 32-96mm equivalent 3x zoom, 3.3x digital
It has a four megapixel CCD sensor. That sounds primitive but it was 25% more pixels than the previous model that came out just the year before and 4mpx can easily produce 14×11 inch prints. Let’s face it, how many pixels do you really need for Instagram? The intriguing thing about this sensor is that it’s a legacy CCD sensor rather than the more recent and common CMOS technology.
Some people will tell you there’s a magic to CCD sensors. And theoretically they could be right. Any common-all-garden photonic physicist will be able to tell you that Charge Coupled Devices are known to produce high quality, low noise images. The photosites are packed closer together because they don’t have individual transistors, which supposedly improves light gathering.
CMOS sensors or Complementary Metal-Oxide Semiconductors as they’re known in the sensor engineering department of ACME Industries are a lot cheaper to produce and use a fraction of the power.
The fact is, the CMOS sensor in your phone is likely to blitz the one in here but there are those that still talk about CCDs as being more ‘filmic’ in the same way I guess as vinyl records are warmer and more soulful. We’ll see.
In terms of exposure, this has a program mode and 6 scene settings, allowing various combinations, such as portrait, sports and so on. You can change the metering between centre weighted, spot and multimetering, which as far as I can tell has the camera do multiple readings in spot mode and then averages out to get the best exposure for the scene.
But it’s really quite advanced in that it also has Aperture and Shutter priority modes as well as full manual exposure including manual focus. You can also save your settings to four custom modes.
I do think there’s a use case for setting up custom mode where you set your aperture and lock focus zone for street photography. I’m not sure you’d want to be making lots of changes, though, unless you’re keen to dive into the treacly slow menu system. Still it’s it’s nice to have the flexibility.
In manual mode you can go from 1/1000s all the way to 16 seconds, 1 second in Program mode
This can shoot close up, with a Macro Mode of 0.2m-0.8m and Super Macro Mode 0.8″ to 8″ 2.0cm to 0.2m
As you could tell from the intro of this video, it can also shoot video, albeit at postage stamp sized and without audio. That was me doing some very clever editing there.
One nice feature is it has an optical viewfinder with diopter control. This wasn’t just a throwback but actually necessary given the low quality of the LCD screen.
The screen also vampirically sucks the life out of the battery, which is a shame because of the quirks of this camera is that it’s a bit faster in focusing and taking shots when the LCD screen is on than using the optical finder.
This is NOT a speed demon though. It takes seven seconds to start up and then a throws a fit because you left the lens cap on – that’s going to cause you to miss shots. You could be framing that decisive moment of your baby’s first smile and by the time the picture’s taken, he’s 6ft tall and giving you the finger while telling you he impregnated the babysitter.
Let’s call this a contemplative camera; one that causes you to pause and reflect a little, maybe make a cup of tea, have a shower, watch Gone with the Wind before it’s good and ready to let you make Art with it.
It has a range of built-in flash has modes for Auto flash, Auto flash with red-eye Reduction, Fill- flash, Fill-Flash with red-eye reduction, Flash Cancel and Slow Shutter Synchronization Flash (1st curtain effect).
Connectivity
Let’s broach the Pachiderm in the pantry. This thing takes Smart Media Cards. These were brought to the market by Toshiba in 1995 and it’s actually quite a cool format. Wafer thin, it makes Compact Flash looks prehistoric in comparison. It was really designed as the successor to floppy disks rather than specifically for cameras, and originally they called it SSFDC or Solid State Floppy Disk Card. They obviously listened to the marketing department. Smart Media is a bit more catchy.
By 2001 nearly half current digital cameras used Smart Media but it was quickly replaced with the equally obsolete XD, before SD cards came along and just wiped the floor with them all.
Sure, you can find Smart Media readers but at 4 times the cost of the camera I wasn’t going that way.
But this has a nifty trick up its sleeve. USB!! Ok, Type B mini USB but USB nonetheless. Type B USB Mini is the sad divorced uncle of USB Connectors, once dominant but now relegated to drunkenly dancing at the nephew’s wedding and hitting on the bride’s Auntie.
Like drunk uncles, though, you can still find USB cables everywhere. Grab one, plug the camera in, turn it on, and instantly your camera become a mass storage device and you can happily drag down the files at turtle neck speed.
Which brings us to the next issue. It’s just as well this is only a 4mpx camera because you don’t get much storage on a Smart Media card. No raw, just a range of JPG settings including a ‘super high quality’ setting that artificially scales up the image. I guess we’ll see how good that is.
The only other alternative to JPG is uncompressed TIF. On the original 16mb card this came with you could fit ONE tif image. So not exactly practical and they never made Smart Media bigger than 128mb.
One of the biggest issues for obsolete cameras of course is keeping them powered. Fortunately this has another trick up its sleeve, taking standard AA batteries or two CR-V3 battery packs. I stuck with AA. They don’t pack as much power but seemed to last long enough for me when I wasn’t shooting from the screen and again, I’m not going to shell out $40 on batteries for a $20 camera.
But how does it fare as an Art-making device? To test it out, I took it on a dog walk and shot a few pictures around the house and the garden. My garden is itself a shrine to the Greek God of Art, Hephaestus. According to Wikipedia he was born congenitally impaired and grew up to be lame. I can certainly relate to that last part. Just as Zeus once banished Hephaestus from Olympus to live among human for being too ugly to be a God, I wandered the mortal plane of the garden tiptoeing through the dog turds and detritus to find pearls of artistic beauty to share with you.
Are These ‘Art’?
Verdict
Well, I feel that even the act of sharing this with you has been Art. My process laid bare before you, inviting you to see the world through my eyes, the pain and beauty of life rendered powerfully through my Olympus C-4000z
But what of this camera? All pretentiousness aside, it’s actually pretty good!
Around 2001 was when things really started to take off for digital photography and by the turn of the century I was already shooting less film. My kids were born in 1999 and 2000 and I remember using a borrowed Apple QuickTake camera to snap some photos of my eldest when she was newborn. I’ve lost the photos now but I don’t remember them being very good.
But this is actually usable; not just for 20 years ago but even today. It is not perfect of course. One thing this doesn’t give you is much room for editing. The resolution and dynamic range just aren’t there.
The Superhigh Res Mode gives a modest bump but like digital zoom it’s interpolated. Taking a standard file and increasing the resolution to about 3200×2400 in photoshop just using automatic sampling, you get as good if not better results.
The same goes with shooting TIF too. It’s definitely not a raw file. The sharpness and contrast of the image are baked in. Here you do see a bit less artefacting in the TIF file but I’m not sure it’s worth the extra file size Applying my own Velvia-like preset on the files produces equally ugly results with either.
You’re really best of just living within its limitations and getting what you can in camera rather than trying to do anything in post.
Strengths
Colours. They have that Olympus punch – nature amped up – which of course is one of our definitions of Art. Whether it’s the CCD sensor or not, I don’t know. I have always loved the colours out of my Olympus cameras.
Lens. Sharp enough and with a decent zoom range, it makes for a versatile camera. It does get a bit soft in the corners, there is some chromatic aberration, and a hint of barrel distortion (easily fixed) but the pictures have a presence about them that I think isn’t just the sensor.
Ergonomics. It feels good in the hand. Everything is kind of in the right place. This ended up being a popular form factor for lots of cameras of this generation.
Usable in 2022 – as long as you have a smart media card. You won’t have to worry about obsolete batteries and connectivity. You can actually put in some AA batteries, go out and shoot and then easily transfer the photos over to your computer.
Weaknesses
Smart media, obviously. In reality, it will be one TIF file or a handful of JPGs you’ll be copying over since that’s all you can fit on the 16mb card this camera came with.
Speed. Not exactly a sports/action camera or suitable for wildlife. Unless that wildlife is roadkill.
And the optical viewfinder, while nice is not very accurate. At least, that’s my excuse for the crappy framing.
Dynamic range. I didn’t bracket here but I would certainly do that if I was shooting any high contrast landscape scene.
4mpx. This is obviously a recognised issue but the ‘super high quality’ interpolation doesn’t really do anything that enlarging in Photoshop wouldn’t produce.
Summary
As long as you subscribe to Oscar Wilde’s comment that ‘all art is quite useless’ then today I have resoundingly made Art. He was, of course, referring to the emotional impact of art rather than its utility, but it’s still a phrase I relate to. I am after all, a living picture of Dorian Gray. Somewhere in a photo album there’s a trapped young handsome version of myself squeaking to be let out.
Let me know your own thoughts. What is Art to you? Do you have an old camera that you still use and have you taken any photos with it that you would call art?
I will leave you with one quote.
Ed Ruscha in 2003 said, ‘Art has to be something that makes you scratch your head.’ Whether that means lice or dandruff can be art, I’m not sure but if you have made it this far and are scratching your head then at least I can relax, happy that I have once again climbed the photographic aesthetic pinnacle and am looking down on you with the benign but patronising gaze of true artist – knowing that perhaps I have added just a little bit of beauty into your lives and given you some kind of appreciation of what true Art is.
Mark McMahon 