View Full Version : A few first shots and a sad story of heritage lost
First I will show 4 photos selected from yesterdays outing with my comments, then will talk about the experience using the camera and lenses.
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http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3394/3292773226_61fb4f2c54_o.jpg
Cultural Heritage vs. Money
This is…or was an official protected cultural heritage site, now it is just the next neighborhood in Chongqing to end up in the way of yet another apartment complex. The man walking through the rubble is surveying the demolition while balancing himself on one of the ancient stone tablets, one of seven that have been severely damaged over the years and even more so recently by debris.
It is infuriating to see how little regard the Chinese have for their own history and culture unless they are trying to use it to make money or win an argument. Even more unfortunate are the apartments that will be built here without a doubt will be like the others in this city that have sprung up over the last 5 years. Low quality, soulless, and within 2 years of being built totally neglected and smelling of urine around the walls.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3557/3292775812_447883b05e_o.jpg
Keeping a good eye out
This guy is making sure that people don’t get in through the perimeter, the one I’m standing on the other side of. I had to get in so I could see what has become of the cultural heritage site in this neighborhood, to my dismay most of it was rubble under my feet.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3662/3292776012_b3237058ee_o.jpg
Taking the trees
The neighborhood is coming down, and since all of the trees inside the city of Chongqing are transplanted no one will miss them when the new buildings are put up. So in a city with a visibility range of about half a kilometer it seems almost fitting that the trees will be scrapped just like everything else of use that can be found. Green is not a color that lasts long here, even the grass in gray in this city. The workers who perform this destruction don’t have much choice though as morals are something they simply cannot afford on a budget of a couple hundred Yuan a month.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3208/3291955909_4258ecdf71_o.jpg
Little left
This man and his wife used to have a small one room home right behind this wall, now all that remain are bricks and a small makeshift stove made from what used to be the walls of their house. This man said he and his wife did not receive enough money to buy another home when theirs was torn down so now they can only squat in a friends shop in a neighborhood a few kilometers away. His wife sold Oranges in the local market as he did manual labor with the clothes on his back barely hanging on by a few loose threads sewn together.
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The camera used here was a Panasonic G1 with the jinfinance adapter and the Zeiss 28mm f2.8 ZM lens. The camera on it's first outing worked quite well and was very responsive and rarely in my way. Being the first time out there were a few things that I have not sorted out yet, like how to extract maximum image quality from it. The g1 is really small and I wondered if it would be a little clumsy to use because of that but I am happy to find that in the real world I never gave the size of the camera another thought. Nor was it too heavy so was not a strain and was very tactile.
The area I was shooting in was being torn down so there was considerable dust everywhere. I was changing lenses between my Zeiss 28mm and Zeiss 50mm every once in a while and once forgot to turn the camera off which means the sensor was exposed while being on, yet after all this there was not dust to be found on the sensor and not spots on the images. Next time I will take the kit lens out and give that a try especially because of reasons I will state later.
The adapter seems to work ok, my Zeiss 28mm lens is not as worn in as my 50mm lens and the adapter has some play on the m4/3 mount side which means when focusing the adapter would move back and forth a hair which is slightly annoying though did not mar overall use. The Zeiss 50mm f2 lens worked really well and was fun to use as well.
The G1 is sort of an enigma of a camera. When it comes to image quality, I think my old Canon 20D would stomp this thing, especially when it comes to noise as even at ISO 400 there was very visible noise in the image that would show up in a decent sized print. The images do have that potential to print well like a DSLR but the images are very "digital", maybe even more so then any other camera I have used. The images, even the raw ones have all sorts of digital artifacts. It remains to be seen how these artifacts will effect the image when printed, we will see later when I put some pictures on paper.
Manual focus on this camera was...ok. It seems that I still had a lot of images out of focus despite ample shutter speed and f8 aperture at longer distances. As it was the first time out using this type of set up I will for now just call this user error, especially as most of the way through the day I noticed I could make the image area in the finder larger using the custom menu option "LVF DISP. STYLE" which is a must as far as im concerned for anyone who will be using this camera for manual focus.
One thing that I noticed on this camera that is just plain stupid design is the infrared focus assist lamp is in the worst possible place on the camera. When using the kit lens with hood, the hood blocks about 30% of the beam and when I have my hand on the zoom part of the lens in the ready position my thumb completely blocks the beam, not to mention what happens if you hold the camera for vertical shooting and your entire hand is in front of the beam.
I have not had enough experience with the camera to speak about how well the qualities of the lenses transfer over. In a couple shots shot at 2.0 or 2.8 you could see the out of focus rendering of the Zeiss lenses in all their typical Zeissness. As for colors and rendering that remains to be seen, some qualities have transferred to digital but the other I have yet to be able to extract. Also I have vintage Leica lenses here to play with black and white with this camera later on and will follow up then.
Overall from the first day it seems positive, my girlfriend already offered to trade her Canon 5D for my G1 so it must do something right. Either way I think it will make a fine camera that will supplement my film shooting M's.
Spyderman
02-19-2009, 03:39
Dear Avotius,
I'd like to tell you that I feel the same about shameless demolition of many old buildings in my town, only to see glass and concrete "cubes" grow in their places.
Money rules.
Seems that all we can do is record the history in our photographs...
Sad commentary on the destruction of cultural heritage, but very nice shots with the G1 and Zeiss lenses. I'm curious to know if you can achieve sharp infinity focus with your 50 Zeiss on the G1. See my post: http://www.rangefinderforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70136
kipkeston
02-19-2009, 04:27
Photos look great! How are you processing them? They look just like your c41 scans!
I'm of two minds on this cultural heritage thing. Yeah, the old neighborhoods look nice, and such, and it would be great to renovate them. However, they costs lots of money. If you speak to the people that live in them, such as my wife's uncle, he can't wait for the government to tear it down and give them $$'s to buy a new place. They are typically cockroach & rat infested, dirty, cold in the winter, hot in the summer, with little or no central plumbing, and in some they have a shared kitchen and bathroom. Not really very nice when you consider the amenities in a new apartment building.
what dfoo says is true though with one huge but here, most old houses are small and the compensation for a house is based on how big it is then a number is arbitrarily decided on how much to give per square meter and almost every old neighborhood I have been to there are protests about the amount given. In fact on the news a month or two ago was a story about a old village being torn down and the people were offered 1 yuan per square meter, given that most older houses are in the 30-40 square meter range that is about 5 US dollars. In the city here they may get anywhere from 40,000-90,000 yuan for a small house but that is not nearly enough to get one of those new apartments, even in the farthest reaches of the city you need 3-4 times that much for a equivalent sized place.
On the other hand, my gf's parents house was built 15 years ago and is being torn down next year (houses here dont last long, very poor quality) and they are happy to get the money for a new house but the offer is not enough for a house half the size of the one they have now. And once you take inflation and all that in to account, they are all being screwed.
Yes, you do see stories in the news all the time about people getting ripped. However, it is not correct to say they're all getting screwed. The people that I know who got compensated (various members of my wife's family in Shanghai) all got reasonable compensation, and were satisfied with their new apartment, but not altogether thrilled with having to move outside of the downtown core, where their old apartment was located.
oftheherd
02-19-2009, 05:01
Please don't tell me they are going to allow destruction of the stone tablets as well. Sad!
Still, time moves on. In 500/1000 years archeologists will be digging there and marvel at the ancient cubes people used to live in, thankful that they have been able to find and excavate them.
I do hope you and others will document what is there as well as what replaces it. Then be sure to archive well what you photograph. Maybe donate to an interested museum copies or even originals.
So sad when one hears of these things happening. I did enjoy your photos and commentary though. Thanks for that.
oftheherd
02-19-2009, 05:06
...
but the offer is not enough for a house half the size of the one they have now. And once you take inflation and all that in to account, they are all being screwed.
I think that is typical of governments. Many years ago the State and Federal government took a lot of land for a new highway extension in my home area. The road was useful enough, but what they offered for property, including some of ours, was woefully inadequate. I would say the only chance for getting decent compensation is if you have connections. It isn't supposed to be that way, but such is life, no matter the country.
noimmunity
02-19-2009, 05:14
I'm rather more impressed with Sakaguchi Ango's (1906-1955) principled opposition to the whole category of "cultural heritage"--a particularly strong statement coming from a Japanese literary figure who was quick to point out how much of what is called "traditional" today was actually created or revamped quite recently.
Opposition to the category of cultural heritage does not mean that we don't appreciate old things, old architecture and old ways of life. I would rather call attention to the way certain things are monumentalized and become sites for claims about proprietary ownership and exclusive identities. These things are then used to mobilize populations for everything from industrial production to immigration laws, zoning requirements and even war.
The issue of cultural heritage is further compounded by deep scars left by colonialism, when "heritage" from around the world was pillaged and removed to metropolitan imperial centers. There is quite a debate about that historical legacy. Most recently, the US-invasion of Iraq led to the most devastating pillaging of national treasures from that country's national museum in the opening days of the war (and most of that heritage probably ended up in the hands of private collectors in wealthy countries outside the land of heritage).
Rather than open up that can of worms just yet, I think we should rather be asking ourselves why certain things like "cultural heritage" have become absolute values? There are well-documented cases in which preservation has become a pretext for all kinds of authoritarian gestures. The more compelling stories, to my mind, are those such as the last one Avotius tells--the ways in which both preservation and destruction become tools of population management.
Thanks for the first class overlook of the situation.
When I briefly visited Lisbon, I saw areas where old buildings were fought over by inevestors wanting to pull them down, and by others who would rather preserve the history there.
As for Iraq, this is another story.
its all cultural heritage until you have to live there! When I lived in Shanghai, I lived in a nice apartment, in a nice building compound. I saw some of the old longtang houses, and unless mega $$'s was spent on them, they are complete cess pools. I wouldn't live in them if you payed me. My friend, in fact, did just that. They had a lane house renovated, at great expense. It was very beautiful when finished, but still very drafty and cold in the winter, and had continual roach problems... and if you look in their neighbors house? Well. it was best not to!
It is 1 of the ironies of history that capitalism, even state capitalism as practiced under the PRC, has ultimately proven to be more disruptive, @ least w/respect to urban development, than so-called "revolutionary" Communist regimes, even though Marx & Engels recognized that under capitalism, "[a]ll that is solid melts in air, all that is holy is profaned . . ."
It will be interesting to see what happens to the architecture in Havana once Fidel is gone or, similarly, to Rangoon if/when the SPDC junta finally loses/relaxes power.
Please don't tell me they are going to allow destruction of the stone tablets as well. Sad!
Still, time moves on. In 500/1000 years archeologists will be digging there and marvel at the ancient cubes people used to live in, thankful that they have been able to find and excavate them.
I do hope you and others will document what is there as well as what replaces it. Then be sure to archive well what you photograph. Maybe donate to an interested museum copies or even originals.
So sad when one hears of these things happening. I did enjoy your photos and commentary though. Thanks for that.
Where else are those country folks migrating to the cities going to live if they don't built taller buildings? Money = capitalism = bad? It is necessary and practical. They can't save everything.
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It will be interesting to see what happens to the architecture in Havana once Fidel is gone or, similarly, to Rangoon if/when the SPDC junta finally loses/relaxes power.
Last time I was in Havana everything was falling down anyway... in fact, that was the case in most of Cuba. The old colonial buildings would have been very beautiful, but now, mostly just accidents waiting to happen.
Now what is really cool in Cuba are all the old 50's american cars!
Yes, you do see stories in the news all the time about people getting ripped. However, it is not correct to say they're all getting screwed. The people that I know who got compensated (various members of my wife's family in Shanghai) all got reasonable compensation, and were satisfied with their new apartment, but not altogether thrilled with having to move outside of the downtown core, where their old apartment was located.
that explains part of it too, in shanghai house prices are significantly higher then here in Chongqing so the compensation is skewed a bit between here and there. the going rate this year for a house in the main city areas being torn down is about 2700-2900 per square meter, and new house prices in the same areas are about 7000-9000 per square meter which I know is a lot cheaper then shanghai! That is the other thing too, for instance my gf's parents live in a central hub of the city, after their house is torn down they will have to move out to the outlying districts. Also keep in mind that Chongqing is decades behind shanghai in terms of development, my gf still spends nearly 3 hours going to and from work 6 days a week.
Where else are those country folks migrating to the cities going to live if they don't built taller buildings? Money = capitalism = bad? It is necessary and practical. They can't save everything.
Chongqing is the capitol of China for migrant workers now, since the new years nearly a million more migrant workers have come into the city from areas in Guangzhou because after the holidays they all lost their jobs so they are flooding this way. The country folk here cannot in their wildest dreams afford a apartment here, let along to rent one, its a difference between making 600 yuan a month and sending most of it back home and squatting with 30 other people in a room and making 8000 yuan a month and being able to afford a semi ok apartment. To make things even more ironic many of the new buildings they are building now have all sold before they even break ground and the people who buy them are people from Beijing/Shanghai/Shenzhen/Guangzhou who just sit on the house and leave them empty. A couple days ago I was walking by what was the Chongqing nail house and is now a shopping mall with three large apartment building on top and I kid you not, only one light was on in all three buildings.
ps. two years ago I did a project on migrant workers in the port of the city, they just slept on the streets, they could not afford any kind of housing at all. No my good sir, the new buildings are not for the masses.
Tuolumne
02-19-2009, 06:19
Back to the really important issue of the G1. Could you point to some digital artifacts for me? I don't see any in your posted photos.
/T
bmattock
02-19-2009, 06:21
I enjoyed wandering around in the hutongs when I was in Beijing some years ago. I am sorry to see them go. Good photos!
Back to the really important issue of the G1. Could you point to some digital artifacts for me? I don't see any in your posted photos.
/T
You cant really see any in the small little pictures here, when you look at the originals a little closer you can see lots of evidence of noise reduction being applied even at iso 200 where fine details are all but gone. I am going to have to do a side by side test but I dare say it seems as if my Ricoh GRD sometimes did a better job with some details! Most of the artifacts take the form of digital processing "ghosts" where something was changed or computed. A while back I referred to the G1 as just another noisy panasonic camera, I am sticking to my guns on that one, this camera does display a lot of problems with chroma noise.
that explains part of it too, in shanghai house prices are significantly higher then here in Chongqing so the compensation is skewed a bit between here and there. the going rate this year for a house in the main city areas being torn down is about 2700-2900 per square meter, and new house prices in the same areas are about 7000-9000 per square meter which I know is a lot cheaper then shanghai! That is the other thing too, for instance my gf's parents live in a central hub of the city, after their house is torn down they will have to move out to the outlying districts. Also keep in mind that Chongqing is decades behind shanghai in terms of development, my gf still spends nearly 3 hours going to and from work 6 days a week.
When I left last May, our apartment was very central and went for 2.4mio RMB for 94 sq meters. Other more upscale places were much much more expensive, the the prices were rising very quickly over the prior 6 months. I suspect since then due to the economic crisis the prices have dropped. I'll be back in April for a month, and will check it out :)
I have some photos somewhere of an area around xin tian di in Shanghai, which is right in the middle of the city and a very desirable area for development. A bunch of residential buildings were being torn down to make way for the latest very expensive and pricy high rise building. Around that area were all sorts of "peace and prosperity" propaganda signs showing off the great new development where the residents were being moved. That was the good news. The bad news is that this location was very far from the city center (like 2 hours bus ride from the current location)!
George S.
02-19-2009, 06:46
I think that is typical of governments. Many years ago the State and Federal government took a lot of land for a new highway extension in my home area. The road was useful enough, but what they offered for property, including some of ours, was woefully inadequate. I would say the only chance for getting decent compensation is if you have connections. It isn't supposed to be that way, but such is life, no matter the country.
I hope you appealed or sued over the land value..... At least in the USA you can sue the government if you feel you're not getting fair value for the land being taken. My mother was a member of a jury that heard these tyes of cases and in every case gave the plaintiff the amount they sued for. In one case the state gov't was putting in a new highway ramp which went right thru a farmer's field, splitting it in two and making the parcel on the other side of the highway ramp unusable. The gov't wanted to pay the farmer only for the actual area of the land being used for the ramp, and not for the part he's no longer be able to get to to farm! You'd think the government would learn after losing in court all the time, but I guess everyone doesn't sue, so they still come out ahead after making these lowball offers.
When I left last May, our apartment was very central and went for 2.4mio RMB for 94 sq meters. Other more upscale places were much much more expensive, the the prices were rising very quickly over the prior 6 months. I suspect since then due to the economic crisis the prices have dropped. I'll be back in April for a month, and will check it out :)
I have some photos somewhere of an area around xin tian di in Shanghai, which is right in the middle of the city and a very desirable area for development. A bunch of residential buildings were being torn down to make way for the latest very expensive and pricy high rise building. Around that area were all sorts of "peace and prosperity" propaganda signs showing off the great new development where the residents were being moved. That was the good news. The bad news is that this location was very far from the city center (like 2 hours bus ride from the current location)!
my goodness, 2.4 million yuan here in chongqing can buy you a 3 story house house with small yard, not an apartment thing. My gf and I have been thinking about buying a house too but prices keep going up and up, right now a house in the 300,000 yuan range (46 square meter) is right across the street from the toll booth to get out of the city, which I thought was funny when we were looking at this one place, just there to remind me just how far out we were.
this place I took these photos had the same signs of peace and prosperity and how its for the benefit of the "ren ming" (people)
oftheherd
02-19-2009, 07:02
I hope you appealed or sued over the land value..... At least in the USA you can sue the government if you feel you're not getting fair value for the land being taken. My mother was a member of a jury that heard these tyes of cases and in every case gave the plaintiff the amount they sued for. In one case the state gov't was putting in a new highway ramp which went right thru a farmer's field, splitting it in two and making the parcel on the other side of the highway ramp unusable. The gov't wanted to pay the farmer only for the actual area of the land being used for the ramp, and not for the part he's no longer be able to get to to farm! You'd think the government would learn after losing in court all the time, but I guess everyone doesn't sue, so they still come out ahead after making these lowball offers.
In fact, our land was cut in two also. My mother may have appealed, but I don't think so. A businessman on another part of the project did appeal but didn't get anywhere. I don't think law at the time allowed for anything more than appeal, or perhaps legal fees were too much. Again, we didn't push (my mother had little stomach for butting against stone walls), but in our state at least, you cannot be cut off from your land. Someone has to allow a free right of way. However, that would only have hurt one of our neighbors. The State didn't care.
Tuolumne
02-19-2009, 07:07
You cant really see any in the small little pictures here, when you look at the originals a little closer you can see lots of evidence of noise reduction being applied even at iso 200 where fine details are all but gone. I am going to have to do a side by side test but I dare say it seems as if my Ricoh GRD sometimes did a better job with some details! Most of the artifacts take the form of digital processing "ghosts" where something was changed or computed. A while back I referred to the G1 as just another noisy panasonic camera, I am sticking to my guns on that one, this camera does display a lot of problems with chroma noise.
Interesting. To my eyes my shots do not look noisy even a high ISOs, although I've only looked at them on my big monitor, not printed any. When you say you see noise reduction artifacts, is that in the raw or jpg images?
/T
Tuolumne
02-19-2009, 07:09
my goodness, 2.4 million yuan here in chongqing can buy you a 3 story house house with small yard, not an apartment thing. My gf and I have been thinking about buying a house too but prices keep going up and up, right now a house in the 300,000 yuan range (46 square meter) is right across the street from the toll booth to get out of the city, which I thought was funny when we were looking at this one place, just there to remind me just how far out we were.
this place I took these photos had the same signs of peace and prosperity and how its for the benefit of the "ren ming" (people)
Why not buy your house in the US then? Here the prices just keep going down and down. :\[
/T
digitalintrigue
02-19-2009, 07:20
I haven't seen any issues with noise on the G1, what is your workflow?
I don't know how long this has been going on--or if its law, but where many of our farms may have been cut in 2, there are underpasses that allow tractors, farm animals, etc. to pass from one side to the other (NC/USA). I, myself, rode behind a tractor that used an underpass several years ago with beef cattle not minding using it either.
Diane
my goodness, 2.4 million yuan here in chongqing can buy you a 3 story house house with small yard, not an apartment thing. My gf and I have been thinking about buying a house too but prices keep going up and up, right now a house in the 300,000 yuan range (46 square meter) is right across the street from the toll booth to get out of the city, which I thought was funny when we were looking at this one place, just there to remind me just how far out we were.
this place I took these photos had the same signs of peace and prosperity and how its for the benefit of the "ren ming" (people)
When I first got to Shanghai the prices were rising, then they dropped for about 1.5 years. Then they went absolutely nuts... My friend was trying to buy an apartment in Pu Dong in a new complex. The prices went up 5k RMB per square meter per month for 4 months straight. And these were for 300 sq meter apartments! Unbelievable. I think things are not the same now.
Thanks for posting these images, and of your detailed description of the area and the culture. I'm impressed with a photography thread that discusses the cultural aspects of the subjects that we're making images of, not just the kit.
So, now I'm going to mess that all up with a post-processing note. I used SilkyPix this last weekend for the first time, with RAW files from my G1. I noticed that the images, imported into SP, appeared to be very noisey with digital artifacts. Then I noticed the "circular arrow" symbol in the lower right corner, meaning that the program was still calculating on the image. It appears that SP operates on the image in "live view" mode, meaning that whatever change you make will be rendered real-time. So you have to make a change, then wait for the symbol to go away, meaning it's done with that step. Once the live rendering is done, the image is cleaned up nicely, with little or no artifacts.
One tip I got from the PDF owner's manual is to zoom in as far as possible on your image while making adjustments; this will vastly speed up the real-time rendering process, since it only does the real-time rendering on whatever portion of the image window is visible. Once the image is tweaked to your satisfaction, you "develop" it to a TIFF or JPEG or whatever output you choose; this final rendering takes more waiting time.
I'm mentioning this for people who may have opened SilkyPix and thought the image appeared to be way too laden with digital artifacts and noise; once the real-time rendering is done the image cleans up nicely. I also wonder if people are opening an image in SP and not waiting for the symbol to disappear, and immediately trying to export it to another program. Even without further adjustment, just opening the RAW file in SP causes the circular arrow symbol to come on; you have to wait for it to go away before proceeding further, at which point the image is much cleaner.
~Joe
amateriat
02-19-2009, 11:02
Avotius: Thank you for those images. As you hint at in your post, it's not only what gets lost in these instances, but also what gets put in its place.
Here in New York City, most everything that's been thrown up (I use that term advisedly) to take its place along the skyline has been almost entirely about commerce: huge, generally indifferent (if not outright ugly) in architecture, variable in construction quality, and designed to go up quickly. Developers will slap the word "luxury" on just about anything, and charge appropriately, at least up until relatively lately. The quality of some of the places I've walked into is laughable, but the crazier thing is that somebody paid for it, perhaps because they wanted to live in a "cool" neighborhood...which now isn't quite as cool as it was before these behemoths were built.
Of course, these buildings will likely last longer than the fifteen years some of the buildings you mention there will last. Sort of a mixed blessing in my eyes.
- Barrett
Praxis Unitas
02-19-2009, 11:03
There's an outstanding photograph series by a man named Paul Duda entitled "The Vanishing Hutongs of Beijing" It was done about two years ago, just in time to catch the last glimpses of some of these beautiful places before they were destroyed for the summer olympics. The photos are some of the most amazing I've seen, too. I think he used a modified Rodenstock camera with extremely long (several hour) exposures to get enormously rich details and contrast. Don't ask me how he accomplished that.. it just looks beautiful.
Last time I was in Havana everything was falling down anyway... in fact, that was the case in most of Cuba. The old colonial buildings would have been very beautiful, but now, mostly just accidents waiting to happen.
Now what is really cool in Cuba are all the old 50's american cars!
What's really cool in Cuba is the lack of cars. Also the lovely welcoming people and the lack of consumerist affluenza
FA Limited
02-25-2009, 19:59
nice report colin, i enjoy your style of reviews very much
i was in chonqing 4 years ago on the yangtze river before it was flooded, but didn't really get to see the side that you've been talking about.
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