Jon Sienkiewicz Blog

My friend Toko is the best golfer I’ve ever known. He ordered new graphite shafts from a mail order company in Texas and reshafted his clubs by himself. When you hear these two facts you may think that he was using state-of-the art, custom-made equipment.

The problem with most photo backpacks is that they’re perfect for carrying cameras, lenses and a ton of small accessories, but perfectly awful when it’s time to pack anything larger. Yes, I know—some models will accommodate a notebook PC. But many of those require the mouse and AC adapter to share space with camera accessories.

A short time ago I was shooting with a Tamron 18-270mm zoom lens on a Canon EOS 40D and discovered something very surprising. When I reviewed the images of some leaves that were backlit against a bright sky I didn’t see any DPF. You know what DPF is, of course: Dreaded Purple Fringe. It usually inhabits the contrasty edges that separate highlight and shadow areas in some digital images. I’d upload an example, but I know you have plenty of your own.

On Thanksgiving morning I left home before eight and drove my Jeep 20 miles to photograph a farm I’ve been shooting for the past 15 years. Sometimes it’s hard to keep a relationship fresh and exciting for such a long period of time, but like an exciting woman, this subject reveals something new to me every time we meet.

It’s really scary when I think of it this way, but my career in the photo industry spans parts of four decades. I started as a junior salesman at Minolta Corporation in 1975 and left as the vice president of marketing for the camera division 29 years later. Minolta is gone and the Konica interlopers are out of the camera business. Many of my friends in Japan are now designing and marketing cameras for Sony, having moved there when Minolta sold off all of their camera patents and other intellectual property. Other former colleagues here in the US are now selling Panasonic, Fujifilm and Samsung products. I am doing what I have done long if not well: writing.