Still messing around with that new 50mm lens. I'm hesitant to call it a "nifty-fifty" as I may get excommunicated from the cult. Oh, and I also went to an Artist's Talk. Fun !!!

 

One of my friends needs a photograph for a book cover so I'm coming out of retirement for one hour this coming Saturday to make that photograph for him. I hope I can remember all this incredibly complex photo and lighting stuff... 

In other, more exciting news...

I went to an artist's talk given by my friend, Will van Overbeek, on Sunday afternoon at the Neill Cochran House Museum. The venue was packed. The event was surreptitiously and ably covered by noted photographer, ATMTX. The folks at Tito's Vodka provided alcohol and mixers. Local museum and gallery luminaries, and other photographers, were in attendance and Will V.O. did a great job both entertaining us with a slide show (digital projector) of his work while providing insight into why and how he photographs what he chooses to photograph. In this case the photos being discussed were from his recent project, "Wet Dogs." It's nice to see real, printed photographic art, well framed and hung up in a spacious gallery, with good lighting!

I did not take my new lens. In fact, I didn't take a camera or lens of any kind. I figure a fellow photographer's talk isn't the place for me to wear unneeded, flashy photographic jewelry...

The new lens (Leica 50mm APO SL Summicron) break-in period is gaining traction and I'm becoming more and more comfortable shooting with a lens that actually costs more than the first three cars I owned. It's nearly flawless, optically, but it is large and a bit ostentatious. I first tried it on the SL2-S camera and it did a great job but lately I've attached it to an SL2 camera and I think I like that combo even better. It might be the placebo effect since I know that camera has twice the resolution. Makes me think the images will be twice as resolution-y. 

Kind of funny because all of Will's Wet Dog photos were done in the early days of digital and, to add even more "resistance" the making of the images they were all done with early digital point and shoot, fixed lens, compact camera, and mostly coupled with the integrated pop-up flashes that served those cameras. Nothing in the show was done with a camera that was much above 6 megapixels and a few of photographs were done with absolutely prehistoric compact digital cameras --- some with a whopping.... three megapixels of resolution. The 20x30 inch color prints (contrasty and intentionally highly saturated)  are presented framed and matted and no-one could discern that the images were made with low res cameras. No one. They look that good. Which makes me wonder what the heck I'm doing with all this pricey, high end gear. 

Incidentally, if you have a hankering for one of the "Wet Dog" images they are for sale for $950 each, unframed. So, 20+ year old, cheap, compact cameras, on camera flashes, wild color printing and a packed house, mostly of people in the business who found the images magnetic and wonderful. A counterpoint perhaps to all of the online influencers who constantly strive to convince us now that nothing less than a 100 megapixel, medium format camera will cut it for professional work. If they only knew what actually constituted professional work...

Will's first big, widely done project was a story about the ROTC culture at Texas A&M University. The Aggie Corps. The project took place back in the 1970s and was initially done for Texas Monthly Magazine. All on black and white film.  

Will thought up the project and pitched it, pretty much right out of school  at the UT Photojournalism Dept. Will studied with FSA photographer, Russell Lee, and took four or five semesters of classes with visiting lecturer/world famous photographer, Garry Winogrand. More  GW than I could endure... but obviously formative. Inspiring?

Here's the magic though. Texas Monthly initially paid for his gas, and film --- and that was it. Will pursued the project, going from Austin to Bryan, Texas on a regular basis for TWO YEARS!!! And instead of timidly standing back and shooting "discreetly" he made friends, got close, shot fearlessly,  came back again and again with prints for people he'd photographed, and eventually assimilated into the group. He earned the images. He earned the access. And he put his time into the project. 

The photographs were so well received that he was offered a book contract and the book about the Aggies took off like a rocket. And so did his career. And throughout his working career his personal projects have almost always been accomplished using small, cheap, lousy, funky but also pretty good compact cameras. In the film age and then again in the digital age. Different technologies but the same basic idea throughout. 

Will said that it's not the gear or really even the photographer but that the world offers up interesting, captivating, wonderful visual stuff. The photographer's job is to recognize the opportunities and record the miracles in front of the camera. Made by the universe. Captured by those lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time with the right skills. 

Something to think about. His approach to gear is so antithetical to mine. But you gotta hand it to him; it works.  It works really well. Which goes a long way toward explaining why museums and foundations collect his work.

The stuff here, in this post,  are photographs I shot with the 50mm lens that probably cost more than all the compact cameras Will has ever purchased. I shot them before I went to see his talk. Now I'm embarrassed by the lack of interesting content. But I guess everyone does their art/hobby differently. No rules other than the ones you make for yourself. 

Thanks for reading!

Dry Dogs.

50mms? What more would one need?

Leica SL 50mm APO Summicron.

Everyone who enjoys photography has a different opinion about lenses. No matter what camera system they currently own. And not everyone can find a "one size fits all" lens to satisfy them. But I'd conjecture that those who don't shoot sports, birds and ambush paparazzi photos fall into the same category as me right now. Based on the demographics I've been able to assess most readers of the VSL blog are within ten years of my age, on either side, have a college degree of some sort and have worked and saved long enough to be somewhat financially secure; if not truly affluent. Some are retired and some are not. But nearly everyone likes to take their camera out on adventures that are more or less wrapped around the desire to make photographs. 

And most could likely be served by one camera and one lens. I hate acronyms but OCOLOY was an acronym made up by Michael Johnston years ago when he posited that a good exercise for a photograper would be to use: One camera and one lens for one year. I'm more flexible than that. I understand that there might be times when it's good or practical to step away from the one, one, one experiment. But at its heart the OCOLOY is a good way to get really, really proficient with a very pared down set of tools. Simplicity sometimes equals transparency in the process. 

As a working commercial photographer, during my career, I never succumbed to the OCOLOY idea. I always felt that I had to have enough focal length variations and choices to handle any of the work projects that clients needed done. We needed very wide angle lenses to show off vast warehouse or factory spaces, macro lenses for product work ---- especially with very small products --- we also needed longer lenses to photograph speakers at podiums in big convention halls. Fast, medium telephoto lenses for traditional portraits and medium-wide lenses (think 35mm and 28mm) for event imaging that required a bit of documentary skill.  Or zooms that provided the same coverage. And reasonable proximity to the participants.

After I passed along my 30+  year position as a theater photographer for a regional theater it dawned on me that the only type of work I had been doing with longer zoom lenses was shooting live stage productions. After a few months I gathered up the long zooms and sold them off. Never looked back and never needed the zany 70-200mm f2.8 lenses for anything else. It was fun to see them go...

The same thing seems to be happening with wide angle lenses in my "work kit." I look at the lenses I've accrued for corporate work with a big mirrorless camera and started separating out the lenses I never really used for any of my personal photography. I started looking seriously at them and wondering when was the last time I pulled X lens out of the drawer to stick on a camera and take out just for fun. Amazingly, the selection was pretty easy. They could nearly all go. Now.

I have two main camera systems. One is built around the Leica M mount cameras and the other (always thought of it as my "commercial" system) is built around the Leica SL cameras. mirrorless. 

In the M mount system raw performance is balanced by portability, reliability and compactness. Great glass and easy to carry around. In that system I have lenses from 21mm to 90mm and those aren't going anywhere. Most are Zeiss or Voigtlander lenses and they work remarkably well when I want to downsize the overall package; and they shrink the total volume and weight when mounted on an SL camera as well. But, as I said just above, that M system, and those lenses, aren't going anywhere. They are too much fun. Especially the two APO lenses from Voigtlander (35+50). Perfect for casual shooting.

But in the "work" system (SL) I've got way too many choices and way too much duplication and overlap. I pulled out a cardboard box and started pulling out the lenses I kept for clients but haven't had fun with in years. There are lots of contemporary wide angles but also a hodgepodge of older legacy 50mm lenses from Nikon, Canon, Zeiss and Voigtlander. A handful of semi-wide to semi-long zoom lenses from a variety of makers and lots and lots of neglected filters and adapters to fit everything. 

Nearly every single prime lens in the collection isn't quite as sharp as the individual focal lengths represented by one Leica 24-90mm SL zoom lens. Why keep them? Size? That's what the M rangefinder lenses are for. 

So, what will I end up with if I really want to downsize the lens collection; in addition to the M mount lenses? Two Leica zoom lenses, one Leica 50mm (the one above), one Leica R 135mm f2.8 ROM lens and.... perhaps... the Sigma 45mm f2.8 for those times when small and light but AF and auto are part of the fun. 

Why the zany APO 50mm f2 SL Summicron? I always thought it would be fun to own the best 50mm lens ever made for consumer cameras --- at least once.  How am I liking it so far? Really great optical performance is as addictive as it gets. It's amazing. Incredibly expensive but amazing. 

The "end of client work" mentality is interesting. For the first couple of months there was a running sub-current of disbelief. A sense that at any minute I'd drop back into the work mode and would need all the stuff I'd pieced together over the years to get stuff done. That an amazing project would surface which might call for some combination of the un-fun, but highly practical, stuff in order to complete. But over time, as I turned down more and more routine work and said "goodbye" to clients, I became more and more resistant to the idea of spending any time which was out of my complete control. And, at a certain point a month or so ago, it was like a switch in my brain clicked and the idea of ever going back to actual, paid work became a non-starter. I'd been spoiled by doing only what I wanted to do... on my schedule. For my own amusement and satisfaction.

At some point I think everyone who cuts the strings with a photographic work/career comes to understand that the fun quotient that drove us into the field was situated in the primeval early days of one's rapturous first embrace of photography. The fun times always seemed to be those first carefree years when one could only afford that entry level SLR and that 50mm lens that came as part of the kit. And amazingly all the things we shot with that primitive kit had more energy and sparkle than anything that mountains of gear eventually provided. Mostly because we had limited choices and never thought to try a throw money at a creative challenge. Because, well, we really couldn't.

At least that's my sense of it. So, for me, the idea of a really cool 50mm, and one really cool camera body as an every day combination pushes me to remember and appreciate how easy it was to make photos I really loved back in the day. When no other choices clouded my intentions. 

It may be just me but distilling down gear seems fun and clarifying. Purging. Freeing. 

Works for lights, light stands, modifiers and lots of other stuff as well....

I understand that many photographers don't love the 50mm focal length as I do. I'm sure it's partially nature and partially nurture ---- as in what you learned on and what you became most comfortable with. You may feel about the 28, 35 or 85mm choices the same way I do about the 50mm but I have a sneaking suspicion that, even if you protest my basic assumption, there's one focal length lens that holds a special place for you and if you didn't have external constraints gnawing at you it's the lens you'd pick nearly all the time. And the one you do your best work with. And that's something fun to learn, even this far into life.

From yesterday's first excursion into mono-lensing.

photographed on South Congress Ave. with a

Leica SL2-S and the 50 APO SL Summicron. 

A nice and ?practical? combination...

 

New lens arrives and is almost immediately subjected to "mannequin testing."

UPS got here early. I was thrilled. They delivered a nondescript, brown box with no box trauma evident anywhere. Nicely done. Inside the box there were lots of shipping peanuts. And nestled in the warm embrace of the peanuts was another box. And inside that box there was another box (no kidding) and inside that box was all the goodies one has come to expect when unboxing a premium Leica lens. I pulled out a 50mm APO Summicron and immediately attached it the a waiting SL2-S camera - waiting patiently on my desk with a fully charged battery and a (twice checked) memory card. 

The lens is heavy. Incredibly solid feeling. Bereft of any external controls other than the focusing ring. I spent an hour walking around shooting random stuff that I thought might show off the performance of the lens and then, after stopping to buy Girl Scout cookies (thin mint) I rushed home to look at the images and perhaps convince myself that I hadn't spent a king's ransom for nothing. These four images are really two images; a full size and then a very tight crop so we can all see the detail in the fabrics and the appliqués. 

From my point of view the lens is exactly what I was expecting. And hoping for. Both images were shot hand-held and at f2.8. I think the detail is yummy. That's all for right now....