A dead SS guard floating in the canal. Local nazi officials dead by suicide in their apartments. Emaciated corpses in a cattle car. These are the photographs I have known from Lee Miller for a long time. I have a big book of her photos in storage overseas.
Tamara and I went to Tate Britain yesterday to see an exhibition of Lee Miller’s work.
This photo of Lee Miller is in the National Portrait Gallery. It was taken in 1943 by her long-time fellow photographer colleague David E. Scherman.
There are a lot of photos of Miller because before the war she was a model and then assistant, lover, and muse to Man Ray. And she was assistant to the eminent fashion photographer George Hoyningen-Huene.
And then she had a studio in her own right.
She was an adventurer, and when she came to London from Paris and then war broke out, she stayed.
She wanted the British to send her to the front as a photojournalist, but they would not.
But she was American, and she convinced the U.S. Army to send here as a war correspondent and photojournalist forVogue magazine for whom she worked before and during the war.
Lee Miller’s War Correspondent uniform
That is how she came to document the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald.
By 1945 she had photographed dead nazis, concentration camp survivors and piles of the dead, and she had soaked and lathered in Hitler’s bath in Munich and been photographed in it by Scherman.
They took it in turns. She photographed Scherman in the bath. He was Jewish, and her dirty army boots and then his dirty army boots placed by the bath signified the reversal of fate and the end of nazi Germany.
Here are two photos she took. One is an SS camp guard dead in a canal and the other is a camp guard who has been beaten by prisoners after liberation.
Can you imagine what it would be like to stand in front of the beaten uard, knowing the history of the camps as she had seen, and take his photo like she was photographing a specimen?
From what I know of her life after the war, I think the experience in the war hit her so indelibly that nothing was right after that.
That’s said, from some of the photos at the exhibition that showed what she was involved in before the war, maybe the war saved her from a descent into a world of fantasy and eroticism she might have found hard to exit.
Al Bulwayeb near Siwa, 1937
The exhibition at Tate Britain is on until 15 February 2026.
I bought this camera. It hasn’t arrived yet. I will put up another post with some shots once I have the camera.
The Charmera is tiny – it comes with a key-ring chain you can hang it from. You can tell it is tiny anyway because it only weighs 30g. My Ricoh GR III, which is the smallest camera I own is ten times the weight of the Charmera.
Here are the key specifications:
Image Sensor: 1/4-inch CMOS Resolution: 1.6 Megapixels (1440 x 1080) for photos and video Video Format: AVI, 30fps Lens: 35mm equivalent, f/2.4 (fixed) Storage: MicroSD/SDHC/SDXC card up to 128GB Display: Small, non-touch LCD screen Battery: Built-in rechargeable 200mAh Connectivity: USB-C for charging Dimensions: 58 x 24.5 x 20 mm Weight: 30g Built-in flash, 7 filters, 4 frames, date stamp
The 1/4-inch sensor refers to the sensor’s diagonal, not its width or height, and although exact pixel size isn’t specified, using typical sensor geometry miniature cameras, that translates to approximately 3.6mm x 2.7mm.
Here is a diagram showing the size of the sensor compared to Micro four-thirds, APS-C, and full-frame sensors. As you can see, the sensor is tiny.
The general physics for sensor resolution is that it is a function of length and not area.
It’s not as simple as that because the angle or pitch of the individual micro-lenses has to be taken into account, and this camera is only 1.6MP. That would translate to 16MP on full frame.
In other words, the little micro-lenses on the Charmera are not crammed in there. So they may have a nice shallow pitch, which is better for gathering light. So maybe the camera punches above its weight.
I’ve had my Fuji X-T50 with 35mm f2 lens for nearly six months, and I know enough about its handling now to review it.
The body weighs 438g, which is light considering that it has IBIS and a 40MP sensor.
And overall I am very pleased with the camera. It doesn’t feel too small in the hand, and controls are very straightforward.
It hasn’t taken me long to feel I can instantly make any settings I need to aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and exposure compensation without having to sit and remember. The viewfinder shows an icon against each setting to remind you.
The only thing I forget momentarily is that the lens itself has an aperture dial, so that is where I need to turn the aperture ring to change aperture.
It’s simple, but there are so many lenses now that do not have an aperture right, that it is easy to forget , if only for a moment.
The IBIS (in-body-image-stabilisation) works very well and I am very happy with the extra megapixels. My experience is that more megapixels really does improve image quality.
General Points About APS-C Versus Full Frame
Compared to full-frame cameras with the same settings, APS-C cameras have more in focus because there’s more depth of field because there’s a shorter focal length for the same angle of view.
There are plus points and minus points for that compared to full frame.
Were I to want a shallow depth of field – for portraiture for example – then I would need a lens with a bigger maximum aperture than if I was shooting full frame.
The focal length and maximum aperture I would need in APS-C to get the same depth of field a full frame sensor with a 50mm f2 lens is a 35mm f1.4 lens. And they are available.
And the focal length and maximum aperture I would need in APS-C to get the same depth of field a full frame sensor with a 35mm f2 lens would be a 23mm f1.4 lens. And they too are available.
It’s the same with a full frame 85 mm f2 lens. A 56 mm f1.4 APS-C lens would give the same depth of field.
So getting a shallow depth of field with an APS-C camera is completely doable.
Of course, if I had a full frame f1.4 full lens and wanted an APS-C lens with the same depth of field, then we are getting into very wide aperture lenses and they come at a big premium.
Outside of that, the counter argument is that APS-C lenses have more depth of field for the same f-stop, and for work where more depth of field is wanted – such as in landscapes – then APS-C has the advantage.
Downsides with the X-T50
So, is there anything not perfect about the camera?
It comes down to weight and ease of carry. My Ricoh GR III in a leather carry case slips into a jacket pocket and it weighs so little that I truly can forget I have it with me. That is not so with the XT-50.
It is not that it is heavy; it is that it is not so light and small that I can forget it. So then the question arises as to whether it is the right size. Specifically, is it big enough to handle a long lens. And it is not, not really.
I also have a 55-200mm lens, and the body feels too small to balance it properly or to control it on a subject. It’s not terrible, and I have been pleasantly surprised to find that shots I thought had to be misses, turned out to be hits.
But the experience when shooting with a long lens is not reassuring.
So then the X-T5, the big brother to the X-T50 starts to appeal. It is not that much heavier at 557g with battery and card compared to 438g for the X-T50.
And so that question comes down to whether to use the X-T50 as a small carry around and get an X-T5, or whether to sell the X-T50 and get an X-T5 and use the GR III as my carry around.
Or (there is always an ‘or’) whether to sell the X-T50 and get an X-T5 and also get a GR IIIX which has a 40mm full-frame equivalent lens. Or just get an X-T5 and have done with it.
First world problems, and as much a part of photography as actually taking photos.
Any Early Portrait With The X-T50
Such nice light coming in from the window and what a nice window, tall and letting light in from above. And a pale, neutral colour on the wall. What is not to like as a setup?
This is the Fuji X-T50 with 35mm f2 lens, and I grew to like it as the days on holiday in Amsterdam wore on because I started to like what came out of the camera. To begin with I was shooting big scenes that were too far away to really show what the camera can do.
As I was reviewing the shots in the camera I began to see what was working.
I got the camera specifically as a carry-around and travel camera. I couldn’t put up with using my GRIII for everything because without a viewfinder, and in bright sunlight, I am shooting blind– or at least with less certainty.
In terms of image quality the X-T50 is of course ‘better’ than the GRIII because it has more pixels. But really it is just different.
Except I have to give it to the Fuji. For the shots that work, I like it more and after just a few weeks I developed a good feeling for it and started becoming attached to it as a tool.
