Low clouds and tall buildings. Chicago.

I know, logically, that the Leica Q2 is capable of "better" image quality but one thing I really like about the Leica DLUX8, especially as a travel camera, is its ability to zoom to 75mm for those times when you really can't get any closer to your subject and really want a more compressed image. 

We don't often see low hanging cloud conditions in our part of Texas so as we were walking back from the Navy Pier in Chicago it was novel to see a cluster of clouds wrap around a tall building and linger there. I had my DLUX8 hanging around my neck so I pulled it up, zoomed to 75mm and snapped away merrily. 

I'm sure I could have grabbed my Q2, switched the crop setting in Jpeg to 75mm and soldiered on with a 6 megapixel file but it was more satisfying to capture the right angle of view in camera and to be able to pre-judge it as I shot. It's great to have the option to go wide (24mm equivalent) to short telephoto (75mm equivalent) in one compact package. 

Would the image have been "better" had I brought along an SL2 camera and the big, 24-90mm Elmarit zoom lens? Maybe so. Would I need whatever improvements the big, heavy lens and big heavy body provide? Not likely since most of the images I shot on vacation are destined for display on the web. Would I have enjoyed the extra exercise I'd get from carrying around four or five pounds more of gear?

Not likely. 

It's different selecting gear for vacation trips than selecting gear for work. Different requirements and, in some cases, no requirements at all...

I am back from Chicago. It was a nice, long weekend. I made photographs while following my art director wife from museum to museum.

 

A fellow photographer we met out on Wabash Ave. 

Chicago is a great city; at least the parts of it that I saw... The people I met in the streets were mostly congenial and, well, normal. It's kind of amazing because I read a couple of guidebooks and watched a couple of popular, mainstream YouTube videos before we headed there and each one tossed in a warning of sorts about crime. Lot's and lots of crime. It was suggested that I avoid publicly visible camera wearing and that I keep whatever bag tightly cinched across my chest or risk being robbed in broad daylight; right there on the streets. But I have to tell you that inside the "Loop" I felt as safe or safer than here in Austin and I consider Austin as pretty darn safe. I've long since given up worrying about carrying a camera in the streets -- even a pricey one. 

It's an easy journey from Austin to Chicago and I have to sheepishly admit that I have been to the "City of Broad Shoulders" a half dozen times or so, but mostly on business during which we flew in, shot a job at a specific location, and then flew out again. No tourism and no sightseeing. It was so different for me this time...

B. and I left on Friday morning last week. I opted for premium economy seats on United Airlines and paid a small, additional fee for priority boarding as we were packing only carry on luggage and I didn't want to be in one of the boarding groups that requires battling for overhead compartment space. The flights are easy; it's about two hours and twenty minutes between the two cities plus whatever lucky time you get to spend on the tarmac waiting for a gate to clear. The price of the tickets was acceptably low and I was reminded that domestic airline pricing was, on average, higher back in the 1990s. At least the way I remember it. 

I packed two cameras and used one of them about 90% of the time. My choice? By far the little Leica D-Lux8. The other camera was the Q2 which, on paper, should produce superior files but in reality is limited by comparison to its smaller, lighter and cheaper sibling. I brought along four extra batteries for the D-Lux8 but really could have pared it down to one battery in the camera and one in the pocket. The camera sips battery juice and I found a fully charged battery lasted all day long. But in context, that's a full day of tourism, not full-on photography mode. As it was I shot about 1600 images over the four days I was out of town and by the fourth day my concern about running out of battery juice dissipated entirely. A big plus over the Q2 is that D-Lux8 batteries can be charged in camera which means I don't need to pack an external charger. 

I wore my camera with me everywhere. On every street. At every venue. Usually right over my left shoulder but sometimes just dangling in the middle of my chest, tourist style. No issues. No second glances from...anybody but a few young photographers sporting their own cameras with their straps wrapped around their wrists. A quick smile and nod of recognition in both directions and everyone moves on. 

We stayed at a nice hotel at the corner of Wabash and Wacker (which sounds funny when you say it out loud...) and it was nicely positioned for quick, pedestrian access to nearly everything we were interested in seeing. Our overriding goal was to spend a day at the huge, labyrinth-like Art Institute of Chicago. 

I've written this before but I'm writing it again because it was so amazing: Seeing original art, as opposed to seeing photos in books or online or on post cards is a whole different experience. When one stands in front of a favorite Renoir, Monet or Hopper painting and sees the rich detail, the elegant brush strokes and the magnificent handling of color --- at scale --- it's a whole different experience. Like the difference between watching a great movie in an IMAX theater instead of watching the same on a cellphone screen while bouncing down a potholed street on a shaky bus...

Hopper's "Nighthawks" is now burned into my retinas and my brain. So wonderful when the original painting is right in front of you... So different from a postcard...

Fifteen minutes after checking into our hotel we were out heading South on Wabash looking for a sandwich shop for a light lunch. That's when we ran into Teri B. photographer. She's a well established Chicago and San Francisco wedding photographer. Here's her website: https://www.teribphotography.com/

She was sporting a shiny and vintage Leica M6 and photographing a friend in the street. In one hand she was carrying a plastic bag filled with fresh film. We chatted for a few minutes and I asked her if she was exclusively a film shooter. "Nope." she replied, "I have an M11 and an M11-M (monochrome) up in my hotel room but I mostly use them for work..." No fears about a "public display of camera" here either.  Nice. Love her website. The visuals are great and the copy is letter perfect. 

Teri B's M. with 35mm Summicron. 

the plastic bag holds the film inventory. I think she had just stocked up at Central Camera which is across the street.  She has a nice and interesting YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@teribphotography/videos

And I especially like her story about doing a whole wedding in France with one Leica M240: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlT7Ml4iwM0

Sorry YouTube makes you watch commercials. But it's worth it to see good stuff.

After meeting Teri and photographing her friend, B. and I headed down the street to a bakery/sandwich shop/café called: The Goddess and the Baker. The sandwiches were huge. We split one. The guidebooks all caution tourists not to make eye contact with locals. Ha! We were in the middle of lunch when the folks behind us asked about my camera and we ended up yakking with a charming, young couple who both had cameras and were obviously interested in photography. Paranoia makes for many lost opportunities....

Dinner the first night was at a restaurant called, Perilla Steakhouse. It's a Korean steakhouse where meat entrées are prepared at one's table. Here's the website: https://www.perillachicago.com/ Our server was fun, very knowledgeable and has an advanced degree in political science. She made our meal one of the most memorable we've had in years. And her wine selections were so perfect. Prices? Reasonable. 

We walked around on Michigan Ave. for a while and then, beat from traveling and mild sightseeing, headed to our very, very quiet room to get some sleep. We were anticipating a six hour Art Marathon at the Art Institute the next day and wanted to be on our game. Favorites in the galleries all mapped out in advance. I'll have more as I dive into processing the images. Hope you come back and read it all. 

This place is filled with new and used treasures. Modern and some even predating me.

Gracious and happy counter help and so much to see. Almost bought an ancient Leica SL film camera complete with its original 50mm Summicron lens but in the end "settled" for a Central Camera bucket hat. Couldn't pass it up. A very nice bricks and mortar camera shop. Old school. 

This is Johann Buis. He is a musicologist connected to the Chicago Symphony. We met him in front of the camera store. Turns out he is a good friend of our mutual friend, Anton Nel, the world renowned concert pianist. You might remember him from my coverage of "33 Variations" Here is the blog post with lots of photographs of Anton: https://visualsciencelab.blogspot.com/2012/12/look-to-art-and-youll-look-at-fun-art.html

More info about Anton: https://music.utexas.edu/about/people/anton-nel

Johann Buis was wonderful to meet and converse with. He's been a leader in the  classical music world for decades. And a long time Chicagoan. So nice to meet interesting people in the streets....

The amazing fountains in Millennium Park. Ever-changing images of Chicago residents; 2000 of them, shown on fifty foot tall video monolith. Kids spend happy time running through the water. So relaxing to just sit and watch. Every once in awhile the people in the photos on the towers would purse their lips and water would shoot out. Kids laughed, parents smiled.

People photography at "The Bean." 

While we were out seeing the sites B. had an observation. Seems every so often a couple would walk up to me and ask me to take a photograph of them with their phone. Three, maybe four times in a day. She wondered if there was some sort of photographer vibe that attracted them. I kept having to move people closer to the camera. I got good reviews on the work. But it wasn't so much fun that I'm rethinking retirement. Still, it's fun to photograph people just on the spot. One couple looked at their images (I always shoot half a dozen) and suggested that I could have a career as a professional photographer... Sigh. 

This is Henry. He's making a photo of his wife in front of the "Bean." 

I loved the color of the camera and asked if I could photograph him photographing. 

He was quite happy to do so. I then used his Instax camera to make a couple of portraits of he and his wife in front of the "Bean." Fun to meet people!

Breakfast sandwiches? Really, no clue. But hey! Tuck. 

A rare photo of B. Standing in front of the "Bean" I was attempting to explore the sunstars that the Leica  DLUX-8 provides at f11 and f16. Works pretty well as far as I can see.....

And negligible flare...

From the Goddess and the Baker on Wacker Ave. 

I think this means you should find a different blog to read. But that's not very nice!

Exterior signages on the Contemporary Museum.

A very small satchel bag is all I brought along. Worked fine for holding all the crap we usually drag around. And, of course it's a Domke product for which I get not affiliate cash or recognition. 

Neon at the Chicago Cultural Center. 4th floor. 

A lesson I learned on this trip: Hire a good, reputable car service to get from the airport to your hotel, and vice versa. Make reservations in advance. The trip from O'Hare to inside the Loop can be as long as 90 minutes at rush hour. If you take a taxi you are at the mercy of the meter which is combination of time and mileage. A luxurious, private and punctual Lincoln Navigator or a Suburban with a driver is available at a fixed cost. And the price differential isn't much. But a private car service means: No waiting. No lines. No surprises. No dilapidated and smelly cars. A quiet ride. A door to door service. Worked well in both directions. 

I have more to talk about re: Chicago but I'm afraid we've already hit our limit for today. Hope you are  happy and well. It's nice to be home. Already planning the next adventure...

All images from the DLUX8.

Getting ready to travel for fun, with someone else, is always an anxiety sport for me.

Are you old enough to remember when traveling was fun? Before the TSA? Before online check-ins? Before restrictions on carry-ons and personal items? Before "getting to the airport two hours before your flight leaves? Before everyone got fat and  spilled over the arm rest and into your space? Before crazy Red Staters tried to open the emergency exits at 30,000 feet? Before drunken fistfights in coach? Before cellphones used on speaker phone at full volume so everyone can hear? Yeah. It WAS better back then, in the golden age. Lots of room, lots of time and lots of fun.

I'm about to go on vacation. Just a long weekend. But I'm sweating bullets. And here's why: If you didn't marry someone EXACTLY like yourself you most probably have different attitudes about airline travel. And hotels. And transfers from the airport to the hotels. The differences can be rampant. And contentious.

I grew up with a military officer as a father. If he declared that we were leaving on a "family vacation" then you'd better be buckled into the back seat of the station wagon with a juice box in your hand at 5:30  a.m. so you can "beat the rush hour traffic." And if the departure time was scheduled for 5:30 am you needed to know that would be the exact time the transmission would move from park to reverse and the car would start to roll out of the driveway. 

I married someone who grew up differently. She has fond memories of leisurely car rides, late departures after a calm and enjoyable breakfast, and memories of real vacations to places like DisneyLand and not just a twelve hour drive (non-stop) to see an ancient aunt and uncle pairing that you personally didn't know from Adam. 

If we look at history it's all so revealing. Spouse never really had to travel for work. The beauty of working in a large ad agency was that her job was graphic design and art direction, after that she'd trust one of the many in-house producers to go on location; if necessary. On the other hand I flew so much in the 1990s, and even up to through 2018, that I think I might have spent almost as much time on planes as I did in the pool. And always, or nearly always, with tight schedules and expensive gear in tow. 

Those were times when missing a flight could have profound financial consequences. And a domino effect on each subsequent part of a tightly scheduled, multi-day project. 

If the airline says be there two hours before the flight I'm never quite sure exactly how to manage it. So I make it three hours. I have no idea how bad morning traffic will be. Maybe someone will wreck their pick-up truck and snarl traffic. No idea of how difficult it will be to find parking. There is always the persistent memory of how painful it is to move multiple, heavy cases of gear of delicate gear from car to check-in. And again, no idea of whether TSA will be fully staffed and reasonably quick or if there will be lines so long you'd think people were waiting for free money to be given away. It's all stressful. And once you get through the security lines and through the magnetometers and through the slow moving folks stopping in the middle of the corridor in order to slowly and carefully put their shoes back on, you then have to deal with the stress of knowing that this time you screwed yourself on the timing and you have a couple hours to cool your heels in one of the horrible chairs at the gate. Or to spend time in the Platinum Lounge listening to chubby sales guys lie to each other about how well business is going.... And, of course, delays. Always delays. 

Nothing beats the frustration of a four or five hour delay on your first leg in your own hometown...

Spouse, on the other hand, is immune to the lingering travel PTSD I've accumulated. She has faith that traffic to the airport will always be light and efficient, and that there will always be a perfect parking spot just across from the terminal. She sees the "two hour before the departure " edict as either being a clever joke or a very flexible suggestion. She is certain that if we are running late the gate agents WILL re-open the doors for us. The weather on her travel days is always perfect whereas my leisure travel seems to occur just as the category 7 hurricane hurries on shore. 

While she will get upgraded to first class the airlines will reintroduce a smoking section at the back of the plane and that's where I'll end up. As part of an airline "equipment substitution clause." And my bag full of lenses and cameras which I was careful to size for carry-on compliance will be gate-checked and lost but then found and, upon opening, will present a wonderful puzzle/mosaic of broken glass and fractured titanium alloy camera bodies, rent as through subject to violent, stratospheric re-entry. 

I spent today upgrading our airline seats. And reserving parking in advance at the private, covered parking lot at the fringe of the airport. And reserving a town car transfer at the other end of the journey. And sending a note, which I am sure will be ignored, or provide fuel for the recipient, to go in the opposite direction, innocently asking to be roomed on a quiet floor at the hotel. It won't work. The room next door will be filled with quadruplets; all teething. Which will cause their parents to clash. Loudly.

But I try to be optimistic because my spouse is optimistic. We'll see which of us wins in the morning: The 5 am wake up for the 9:45 flight or the 7:55 am wake up for the 9:45 flight....

What camera did I finally decide to bring with me? It hardly matters. It's a family vacation and not a real job with a paycheck at the end. But, since you asked... My three top contenders were the Leica DLUX8, the Leica M240 (with a 50mm) or the Leica Q2. I charged batteries for all of them. I took each one out for a walk this week to audition them with the trip in mind. I fumbled around with them. 

The DLUX 8 seemed to be the logical choice because it's the smallest and has a nice range of focal lengths. But then the M240 appealed to my "rugged individualist/Garry Winogrand/Lee Friedlander/Josef Koudelka masochism. You know, a hard-to-use camera with no functional assistance for those laboring under the emotional angst of hellish, modern travel. And no IBIS or OIS. I finally decided on the Q2 after a long process of evaluation. It's pretty small, works well. Has image stabilization. I have three of those bigger SCL-6 batteries for it (I may not even bring a charger for the first time in my adult life... if the batteries run out I'll pretend I always wanted to be a writer anyway...). The lens is fantastic and I need to use the Q2 a lot more than I have. Especially when it comes time to rationalize an upgrade. 

Batteries go in the carry on. And all I'm taking for the long weekend is...carry on. Which is kind is a disturbing choice for words about luggage because it always makes me think of carrion. And the idea of "Vulture Luggage" is, in itself, cringey. 

My idea of a perfect vacation? It goes one of two ways. Minimize the travel trauma by finding some place interesting to visit for about a month. Get there. Stay put and explore the area. Or stay home, stock in delicious treats, make it to every swim practice imaginable, go out to eat at my favorite places, read good, fun books, finish up vacation with a few selfies shot into plate glass windows of chic shops with mannequins on the opposite side of the glass. So much less stress.

I can rationalize travel stress pretty well when it's for work. And profit. But it's a whole different equation if it's just to, you know, go some place different and spend money on "experiences." But I bow to modern pressure. Seems everyone thinks vacations are a good thing. Now that I've effectively retired I have to ask: "What, exactly am I taking a vacation from?"

Photo of "travel spouse" from some long ago attempt at vacation. I think it worked out okay.

vacation at Pease Park.

vacation at the fashion shows in Paris, circa 1994

a hat that I am sure will let people know that I am "on vacation".

Michio Kaku, explaining the physics of vacation to a crowd

the runner up vacation camera.

Crew Café. Montreal

McDonalds in Berlin. 

hanging out with a friend from S. Korea.

these people seem to be on vacation... Love the Birkenstocks. Love the socks.

a vacation for your face

hauling the baby stroller up the steps. 

more vacation. Always more vacation. 

On the way to the car from the museum. An art car.