I'm so glad there are people who buy new Leicas. I look forward to acquiring their older cameras just as soon as they sell them or trade them in...

 

I want a Leica M11-P. I can afford to buy one but I am too "careful" of a shopper to spend the $10,000+ required to buy one brand new, in a box. I have three other M cameras so it's certainly not a case of "need." Especially since I am no longer working for clients who might have various requirements that require specific cameras. Does this mean that Leicas, in general, are "Veblen" goods, as one blogger is quick to label them? Well, it's more complicated than that...

There seem to be two kinds of camera enthusiasts who buy brand new M Leicas. Current model Leicas. One group buys them because they appreciate the industrial design, want to own the "best" product in a category and, to them the price is a small fraction of their net worth and so almost indistinguishable from the cost of a different brand. The second group are photographers, professional or not, who consider their choice of a Leica model as the absolute right tool for the work they want to do; the kinds of photographs they want to take. Most have been around the block, tried multiple systems and landed on a Leica M or even an SL model as the perfect distillation of simplicity and optical performance they've been looking for. Once acquired theses folks tend to stick with their cameras until they've mostly "used them up" or a series of upgraded models have finally added enough additional performance to make a new purchase seem both desirable and rational to them. 

I imagine the first group upgrading to a new camera with each totally new model. For example: upgrading from the M240 to the M10. And then from the M10 to the M11. But I imagine that a person who is power using their Leica m240 learns it so well and so completely that an upgrade to an M10, with the same resolution sensor, doesn't make a lot of sense. If the M240 is currently working for them then the M10 only offers a few differences. A thinner body. A much reduced battery life. A similar sensor with slightly better high ISO performance. For this group the logical step is to go from an M240 to an M11 in order to get the advantages of the 60+ megapixel sensor and all the  improvements that were introduced in the M10 series and further augmented in the M11 models. A better finder, more resolution, and, in the case of the M11, internal memory, USB battery charging and a faster processor. Skipping a generation and putting more actuations on the M240 shutter makes a lot of sense. 

I'm happy that there are both groups. To my fertile imagination it's the people in the second group  who provide the forward momentum for the brand. The folks who are committed to daily photographic work and who, most likely, have many successful images to show and success stories in which the cameras are often mentioned supporting co-stars. These are the people Leica points to when talking about the "legacy" of the brand. The Salgados, the Koudelkas, the Winogrands and the Meyerowitzs of the world. They kick the brand forward and are defacto ambassadors for the brand. 

The vast number of people in the first group, the one's who want the very best in a category and are willing to upgrade at the drop of a hat, are the one's who actually drive enough high end sales to keep the brand in the black and make production of enough cameras efficient enough to make the products relatively cost effective. I imagine that the ratio of serious, daily Leica users to casual fans of the brand is something like one to ten, or more. We love the 90% of those who buy the cameras for the prestige of ownership (the cynical point of view) or the appreciation of classic design, or because they really do intend to use the cameras at some point in the future. We love that 90% because when new models are announced and finally arrive they tend to flood the used market with barely used camera models that still have years and years of great potential left in them. 

Shutters that have been barely warmed up.

Rangefinders that have never been jostled out of alignment. 

And all the packaging included. 

While I love to shoot with Leica digital M series rangefinder cameras I've never found the financial courage to buy a current model camera body, brand new. I've never had the pleasure of experiencing the "new camera smell" I imagine hits one when a buyer opens the sealed box of an M11-P for the first time. Never experienced the thrill of formatting that first SD card to be inserted in a pristine camera slot...

But I've never spent ten thousand dollars on a camera that, in my working days, was superfluous to most of my assignments. Not that I didn't want to but because, being raised in a Calvinist environment, that kind of "splurge" feels wrong. 

I have some history with Leica cameras and have purchased plenty of them brand spanking new. But that was back in the film days. The days of the M6 cameras and the R series cameras. Cameras that were generally much more affordable compared to other the pro models from other manufacturers. At a certain point in time it was less expensive to buy a brand new M6 that it was to buy a brand new Nikon F5. One could make choices without one seeming insanely extravagant. I bought three different M6 variants in the mid to late 1990s because they were available with three different finders. Variations for viewing wide angle, normal and longer lenses. It kind of made sense, especially since, in a pinch each of they could, with small modifications (bright line finders for using wide lenses on bodies designed for longer lenses), be used as back-up camera bodies for each other. 

Near the end of the film era we were shooting with Leica R series cameras and I bought two R8 camera bodies, new from a Leica dealer. But again, they weren't considerably more expensive than the EOS-1n cameras or the Nikon F5s. Just different. More manual and less AF state of the art. 

Fast forward to 2019-2020 and I had, by then, experimented with digital cameras from Fuji, Sony, Canon, Nikon and Pentax. I'd just ditched all of those cameras for the new cameras from Panasonic which were the first generation of affordable, full frame, video forward cameras available for the new L mount system. I enjoyed working with the Panasonic cameras but when the Leica SL2 came out with its 47 megapixel sensor and comfortably distilled user interface I was earning enough money in my full time photography business to take a chance on something radical. I splashed out the full retail price for the SL2 and the Leica 24-90mm lens. It's a great camera and a great lens. Was it worth $5600 + $5200 for the combo? Who is to say? I did a lot of work with the combination and still own them today. But I learned a valuable lesson when I went looking for a Leica SL back up camera. Prices do drop. Luxe cameras really are built to last. 

I found the previous Leica model, the original 24 megapixel SL, a camera that had hit the market in 2015 at $7500+ US dollars, for the princely sum of about $2,000. It's been a workhorse and, for some kinds of work, I prefer the output of its sensor over that of the newer camera model. I have now used SL and SL2 cameras, day in and day out, for over five years. No changes to the system other than adding the SL2-S model about a year ago. And the SLs are still making great photographs!

While the SL lenses don't drop in value nearly as quickly, camera tech gets old quicker and so the market drives prices down quicker and more deeply with camera bodies than it does with lenses. This makes the older bodies a bargain --- to some users. If you need ultra flexible, ultra fast C-AF focusing the older SL models aren't a bargain for you. If you need endless video features you should also look elsewhere. But if you are a photographer who shoots landscapes, portraits, found art, documentation, etc. you'll find some bargains in the Leica bodies coupled with a huge number of L mount native lenses from Sigma, Panasonic and even Leica. You'll also find it convenient and fun to use top quality Voigtlander, Zeiss, Leica and Thypoch M series lenses on SL bodies (with an adapter). 

While SL, SL2 and SL2-S bodies, found used and in great shape, can be considered a bargain for people who love nicely designed menus and beautiful industrial design on the physical aspect of the cameras the selling proposition when compared to Canon, Nikon, Panasonic and Sony isn't hugely compelling. You can, with adapters, use the vaunted M lenses on just about any mirrorless camera body and, with the exception of some wider angle lenses, you'll get just as good results (for best results with wider M lenses you'll want one of the SLx bodies since their sensor micro lenses are designed to give better edge results with wide angle, rangefinder lenses and you'll have profiles, in camera, for the Leica M lenses...) as you would expect from the SL cameras. 

Where everything really gets interesting is when you start looking into rangefinder digital cameras. Leica is basically the only show in town. A unicorn in the camera making business. A segment with few to almost no competitors. And there is something quite unique about focusing and composing via an optical rangefinder window and with lenses coupled to the rangefinder system. The M mount has existed unchanged since 1954. Introduced before I was born!!! And it means that over 70 years of M mount lenses are available and will work with all M cameras, from the M3 all the way through to today's M11 and M-EV cameras.  Wow! 

I think rangefinder cameras in general are an acquired taste. Many of the older generation of photographers started with rangefinder compact cameras with non-interchangeable lenses, like the much sought after Canonet QL17 from the early 1970s. They learned how to use the rangefinders out of necessity and it quickly became second nature to most. It's different now...all younger photographers have come into the hobby or profession at a time when autofocus ILC cameras were/are ubiquitous. Probably always at 99 or 99.5% of the overall camera market. Going "backwards" to a rangefinder is a tougher sell to that generation. But it does appear that the retro-chic of the rangefinder cameras body style is finding its younger audience! How else to explain the Fuji X100VI?

After using the SL (mirrorless) variants for three or so years I made the critical financial error of researching apochromatic corrected 50mm lenses that I could mount onto the my cameras. I found two. One was the 50mm Summicron SL APO for the Leica SL system. It's big, heavy and expensive. To buy one new was, at the time, about $5200. I searched for quite a while to find used ones but even they were priced around $4,000 and it just didn't mesh with my thoughts about lenses and pricing. There are a lot of great 50mm lenses out on the market for fractions of those prices and, I'm not sure I'd see the difference in performance with my cavalier, hand-held use case for most 50mm lenses. Most of the time.

Then I found the Voigtlander 50mm f2.0 APO Lanthar lens, which fit the bill and, across the board, got incredibly consistent high praise from both good and bad lens reviewers. The performance was, according to good sources, within nudging distance of Leica's own $9,000+ APO Summicron for the M series!!! Best part? The Voigtlander was priced, new, at about $1100. I bought one. And I bought adapters. Including the Leica M to L adapter (price of which was outrageous --- but performance? impeccable...). 

And that, right there, the Voigtlander,  was the gateway drug that got me back into wanting and subsequently buying my first Leica Digital Rangefinder (I had previously been loaned both an M8 and an M9 by Leica in order to write magazine reviews on those Leica products...). I used the 50 VM APO for one assignment for a huge medical devices company's project and the results were perfect. But a little tickle in my brain suggested that since I already had a marvelous M mount lens it might be fun to put it on one of the cameras it was designed for and see how that felt.

I started looking at M cameras. M digital cameras specifically. The M11 was priced out of my comfort zone and it was early enough in the sales cycle that M11s were still in short supply. The M10 range was interesting. The basic M10 camera has a 24 megapixel sensor but miserable battery life. A better finder than previous models but... And then there was the M10R which used a higher resolution sensor. about 45 megapixels but it still used the regular M10 battery. Since the base and R models were very recently brand new products the used prices remained high. When M11 supplies dried up (feast and famine for inventories) M10 used prices surged. So I started looking at earlier models. 

Where I landed was on the M240 product line. A camera that was considered a workhorse by anyone who ever shot with one and a very reliable performer at that. It also has a 24 megapixel, full frame sensor but the body is thicker, front to back. The plus side of the size increase is that the battery for that camera pretty much lasts forever. Days and day. Thousands of frames. The only thing that cuts into its battery life is the use of live view. But then again, live view adds the ability to use an external EVF in the camera's hotshoe so, more flexibility. If you need battery endurance you use the M240 camera in the same way that people have used M cameras for decades and decades: manual, rangefinder focusing, composing on the optical viewfinder screen. No image review (unless you just have to have it). At that point the only thing the battery is serving is shutter cocking and image processing in the camera. No other fancy stuff. 

When my favorite Leica dealer got in a good body (just back from a CLA at Leica) at a reasonable (sub-$3,000) price I decided to jump in. With a 50mm on the front the camera was everything I was looking for and most of what I remembered from having the M6s, M4s, M2s and the original M3 (single stroke). 

Not as easy to use as an auto everything, mainstream camera but then you do know about my continuing idea that it's the little bit of friction in creative processes that sparks the most inspiration...

If one is unwilling to disregard the idea that current Leica M series lenses are far and away better than lenses from other makers you are doomed into spending prodigious amounts of money, even for recent, used models. If you are willing to believe that the configuration and construction of the cameras can be a powerful driver of your ability to make great photographs but that lenses are somewhat less critical (assuming that most current ones from many makers are really great) then  you might be able to cobble together a great system for not much more that getting a run of the mill Japanese brand system. It basically comes down, in my book, to how you feel about the use of cameras with rangefinders and optical viewfinders versus cameras that do everything via an EVF and a rear LCD screen. 

While I am pretty much certain that some Leica M series lenses are superior to other lenses at the same focal length I don't fall into the camp that believes the differences between the very best 3rd party lenses and the Leica lenses is monument, big, moderate or even mostly noticeable in most applications. I became aware of this yet again recently when I compared the Panasonic 24-105mm f4 S lens with the much pricier Leica 24-90mm f2.8-4 lens. The differences between the two products, in the real world, were small-to-vanishing. I paid over $5,000 for the Leica zoom but I recently picked up a mint, used Panasonic zoom for about $650. Was there a demonstrable difference? Maybe. If I squint hard and look for absolute sharpness in the very far reaches of the corners of the frame. But for the most part? Nope. 

And I feel like the same kinds of differences manifest themselves when comparing lenses made for M mount cameras from other companies like: Carl Zeiss (ZM), Voigtlander (VM) and now Thypoch. Carl Zeiss makes a 35mm f1.4 lens that routines blows away any competition, including from Leica for a cost of about $2200. Then there are the various APO lenses from Voigtlander. I like the 35mm and 50mm versions but look forward, I guess, to trying out the 90 and 28 APOs in the near future. Given that no Leica rangefinder M camera or lens has image stabilization and that the M cameras aren't really meant to be restricted to tripods, I have to think that the shaky hand holding of the cameras goes a long way toward squashing ---- or at least minimizing --- any real differences in optical performances. 

I've compared the Voigtlander 50 APO and the most recent non-APO 50mm Summicron from Leica and, honestly, I prefer the overall rendering and performance of the Voigtlander. At about 1/3rd the price of the Leica.

I've found that the M240 cameras are pretty fantastic when it comes to actual imaging performance. The sensor is a very good one. Not as good as current sensors when it comes to high ISO performance but in the envelope in which most people work (ISO 200-3200), when exposed correctly the files really shine. 

The only issue I have with the original M240 cameras is their fairly limited buffer. They are constrained to fewer raw images before the buffer fills up when compared to current cameras. Two variants are better. One is the M240-P. It's the professional version of the base camera and it doubles the buffer, removes the big logos on the front of the camera and replaces the Gorilla Glass on the LCD screen with a sapphire glass, which is tougher. A good condition M240P is harder to find than the garden variety but if you find one in good condition it's a great performance stopgap between the M240s and the M10 series cameras. 

The one other M240 variant that I love is the one pictured at the top of the post. It's an M240-ME. It was launched in 2019, uses the same size buffer as the P version of the camera and seems more mature when it comes to exposure accuracy and quicker turn on times. I like them and I like the gunmetal finish a lot. 

I just saw one in 9+ condition on a popular and reliable Leica site and probably would have purchased it if I wasn't already knee deep in camera bodies at this point. 

To sum up, I guess my basic premise is that Leica M series cameras, and to a greater extent, Leica SL series cameras are only brutally expensive and perceived as "overpriced" if you absolutely need to, or want to, buy the latest model brand new. No previous owners. No missing warranty cards. Yes, because of their scarcity, the fact that they are handmade in a country famous for paying a living wage, and being subject to irrational, hurtful tariffs, currently buying a top of the line Leica can feel frivolous, spendy and ill-advised. Unless you can depreciate your purchase or need to burn up some extra money on something fun.

The flip side is that the vast market of used, recent model, digital M cameras beckons. Bargains can be found. Smart purchases made, especially if you don't need the latest features and the current state of the art operating performances. If  you just want a good, solid, fun and functional rangefinder based camera.

Match a good M series camera from two generations back with premium lenses from Zeiss or Voigtlander, or Thypoch and you'll have a fully functional introduction to using Leica M series rangefinder cameras with very little real imaging compromise. If you need to have your hand held by a nanny camera with every possible feature, and an ultra wide ranging zoom lens then indeed, these are not the cameras for you. "these are not the droids you are looking for..."

All top line cameras from the big five camera makers are really, really good now. Better than ever before. All will do images proud and most of us will never see the difference. So at this point differences in imaging are no longer the point. Now the question is: how much fun is the system to use? How well does the camera menu distill down information and controls for you? Is the camera you are considering fun to use? And you get to make the choice from that point on. Is it a fit for you?

Advice: Never use a computer that's faster than the one you currently own. Never test drive a car that outperforms your current car. Never try out a camera that makes operation easier but picture taking more fun. You'll want it.

That's about it for today. No matter what camera you use it's the subjects you aim it at that are most important.

Cheap expensive cameras and expensive cheap lenses. Shooting at night with a fun combo.

Always the best signs.

Leicas of all kinds are considered by many people to be very expensive cameras. No rational person would argue that this is true of their brand new cameras presented in sealed boxes. But there are countless, mostly happy photographers running around photographing all manner of subjects with used Leicas which, in some cases, allow for ownership at 1/3 or even less of their recent retail prices. My favorite example is the Leica SL2. It's a rock solid cameras that was very well received at its launch in 2019. By the end of its run the retail price of a new SL2 was a bit over $6,000. I bought one in almost perfect condition last year for about $2200. There was nothing on the body that would cue one to believe the camera had ever been used. And the operation of it has been without flaws. 

While an SL2 isn't the fastest continuous focusing camera on the market and doesn't have an endless array of optional settings it is built like a steel brick, has wonderfully un-complex menus, and features both a robust 47.5 megapixel sensor and a very high resolution EVF which is further graced with Leica optical glass in the eyepiece. It's a beautiful machine. I thought so when I paid full price for my first one about five years ago and I'm even more thrilled to have picked up the second one, used, at a price that puts it into mercantile competition with much flimsier and lackluster cameras. You can see the used SL2 cameras at lots of good dealers' websites for very modest prices now. Quel bargain... indeed. Oh! And these cameras are also quite good video cameras as well.

So now you can get a formerly "expensive" camera for a "cheap" price. At least --- an accessible price. 

Most Leica enthusiasts would insist that to glean the true value of the camera you would have to couple it with Leica lenses. Otherwise...why bother? While I'm sure that urban legend-style advice might have been true in decades past I think there are tons of great lenses that, if not exactly as "good" as the Leica lenses, provide excellent performance and deliver adequate results for just about any use you might conjure up. While a Leica 50mm SL Summilux f1.4 (in the native SL or "L" mount) will run you about $7,000 I can think of a number of lenses in the same speed and focal length class that I think work equally well for the kind of handheld, quick moving photography I like to use them for. Not currently shooting test charts or mining for gold...or Bitcoin.

While you can go super cheap and buy 50mm legacy lenses in the used market, and get by spending $100 and the price of an adapter to make the lens work on the Leica SL, you could spend more money and get an "expensive" ($700) new "cheap" lens in the form of something like the Thypoch Simera 50mm f1.4 in a Leica M mount configuration. You will have spent one tenth of what you would have spent if you insisted on the Leica SL "Ultra-Nifty Fifty" but I would say that you've made a great bargain. Realized a winning compromise. The expensive/cheap Chinese made lens is remarkably good, even when used at its widest aperture but it also "features" a much, much lower weight and additionally delivers its optical performance in a package that's about 1/4 (or less) than that of the Leica SL version. 

If you have two kinds of cameras with different lens mounts it makes sense to chose a lens mount that can be used across multiple mounts by selecting the mount version that is most widely adaptable. For example, an M mount lens can, with adapters, be used with Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Sony and Sigma cameras, as well as Leica SL cameras while being natively compatible with M series rangefinder cameras from Pixii, Leica, Zeiss and many others (some current, some still available used). On the other hand if you purchase a Leica SL series lens it is not portable to any other system besides cameras made by the L mount alliance. Nor can you put an SL or L mount lens on an M mount Leica camera even though they are made by the same company. 

That's a lot of type to say that I intended to take out one of my SL2 camera bodies and the Thypoch Simera 50mm f1.4 lens for a night time stroll through the South Congress Avenue area. The combination would have been more or less perfect. More perfect because of the high performance of the pair together coupled with the overall budget price of the combo. While the SL2 is not the low light champ like a camera such as the SL2-S it does a great job hiding noise when used with the monochrome HC setting. If you want to shoot at high ISOs in color I generally recommend that you do so using the DNG setting so you can take advantage of Adobe Lightroom Classic's great A.I. noise reduction. 

The entire set up for my evening stroll would have cost me less than $3,000. The camera is robust enough to amply work long enough to pay back my initial investment costs and the ability to use the lens on either the SL cameras (with adapter) or the M cameras is very satisfying. And weirdly cost effective.

Since the lens is made to work on the M cameras and, in that case minimizing size and weight were part of the design parameters, the lower weight of the lens mostly offsets the weight of the camera and makes the combo much more comfortable to carry and handle than the SL version of the fifty millimeter f1.4 lens which weighs in at about 2.34 pounds!!! The Thypoch weighs in at 9.9 ounces. Sure, you are giving up autofocus and various automated features when you go with the smaller lens but it's surprisingly easy to focus quickly through the SL2 finder. More importantly, you are giving up very little in terms of optical performance by choosing the expensive+cheap Thypoch lens as compared to the expensive/expensive lens. 

There is always an argument to be made for "needing" the $7,000 'nifty-fifty" lens from Leica. I haven't used one but I can imagine that the performance at the maximum aperture is visibly better than images from the Thypoch lens at the same aperture. If your goal is to shoot in a style that maximizes a very, very thin plane of sharp focus, with high sharpness and contrast at its core, you might want to lean towards the Leica lens. If you have no assistant, can't bench press hundreds of pounds repeatedly, and already have a nagging lower back pain, you will, no doubt skew towards the smaller and lighter lens. 

And then there is the final question which is: How do you use fast lenses? Do you always shoot them at the maximum aperture? Do you use a tripod or do you always hand hold your camera rig? Do you drink a lot of coffee? I'd conjecture that most of the advantages accruing to the Leica lens are wiped out by shooting handheld at shutter speeds under 1/500th of a second. Or especially under 1/250th of a second. 

Five cups of coffee a day? Then maybe below 1/1,000th of a second...

Almost forgot. If you shoot with the cheaper 50mm on an M rangefinder camera versus shooting with an SL camera and the big 50, you might find that your ability to quickly and accurately focus the M combo is better and quicker than the bigger, more expensive combo in the SL family of things. Just is. At least when the light is low and the edges for the AF to grab onto recede into the dark. 

So, after dinner on Wednesday (smoked salmon, spread over a kale and Brussel sprout Caesar salad) I got in the car and drove through a very light misting rain to park in front of Bird's Barger shop on S. Congress. There was still evening foot traffic but nothing like the weekend crowds during the light of day. I took my chances with the parking patrols and opted to not pay the meter. I grabbed a hat from the back seat of the car, not because I needed the warmth or to block the UV rays (non-existent) from baking my brains, but as a quick camera and lens protector should the mist become a downpour. 

Most of the shops were closed by the time I got there. Some of the front windows were well lit and had fun displays of product (mostly gaudy cowboy boots and fun western hats) but the restaurants were still open and some customers were sitting at tables out on the sidewalks, enjoying the cool breezes and the late evening lack of road traffic. 

While I spent a long time on Wednesday playing around with the lens and camera combination I've written about here (above) when it came time to actually photograph I defaulted to my new norm: I put the 50mm Simera lens on an M240 rangefinder body, attached an EV-2 EVF finder to the hotshoe and shot by focusing with the rangefinder and then composing in live view, via the EVF. It was a slower and more methodical way of working than with the SL2 but it fit the moment. Even the older M240 did a nice job in the low light and with ISO settings up to 3200. The M240 is also another example of a "cheap/expensive" camera. When that camera came out in 2013 it was definitely priced like a new Leica. But here's the difference between used M cameras and used SL cameras; the Ms are completely differentiated from all the mirrorless cameras from Leica and most other companies. If you want a rangefinder (true rangefinder!!!) digital, full frame camera there are one or two choices but the Leicas are the gold standard for that sort of camera. They are more or less exclusive. So much so that even 10 and 15 year old M models hold their value in the markets to a much greater degree than do the SL cameras. The SLs compete with a full range of less affordable and more feature rich competitors. The market shifts much faster because of it. The used M240s I have purchased have cost about 50% of their prices when new. Were I to buy the current M; the M11 camera, I would be paying (new) about $9000. A used M240 in good shape and decent finish is available for around $2500-$3000. While the new M cameras are more feature rich the older cameras still have tremendous value as photographic tools. Value, it seems, depends on the understanding/desire of the potential buyer and the size of the available inventory. As more and more M240s are bought out of the market the prices seem to be escalating, not dropping. But again, this could be due to the recent decline of the U.S. dollar.

The M240 and the EV-2 finder were fun to use. And Live View opens up the option to use matrix metering. The exposures were more "right on the money" than usual and required less tweaking on my part. I most photographed neon, signage, a few mannequins and such. It was fun. The camera and lens work well. It's nice to have choices though. The SL2 and SL2-S allow me to work a bit faster and seem to have more accurate metering. The Ms provide me with more creative friction.  It's all good.  

The pool is open once again. We've clocked a week's worth of uninterrupted workouts. I've also added a three mile run into the mix but only three times a week. I'd stopped for a while during the kidney stone drama but I missed the crunch of crushed granite under the tread of my Hoka running shoes. And... I don't ever want to depend exclusively on dietary restrictions to ensure my longevity. I like broccoli as much as the next enlightened eater but "Man does not survive by broccoli alone!" 

Currently deep watering my trees. Getting the water down a couple feet under the top soil. It's a thing in drought land...
 

Streamlining life.

Coffee and conversation, face to face, with friends. 

Nature abhors a vacuum. At least that's the saying I always hear. But I think this applies also (or mostly) to humans. They seems to have the need to fill everything with: a philosophy, a schedule, a tighter schedule, a bucket list, days scheduled in 15 minute intervals, maximum streaming content potential, rabid connectivity (human and electronic...but mostly electronic), movie reservations, restaurant reservations, forum arguments, too many time commitments, and too much need for massive income to support the endless momentum aimed toward filling the time, the space and the social expectations. 

My wife and I went to a new restaurant recently. Neither of us brought our mobile phones with us. The hostess at the restaurant suggested that they would have a table for us in five or ten minutes. Could I give her a telephone number? Why? So we can text you when your table is ready. No phone, can't you just look over about twenty feet, see us and then walk over and tell us the table is ready? Okay, sure. 

Then there was the parking garage that the restaurant uses. You need to use your phone to scan a QR code at the restaurant in order to exit the garage when you are leaving. No phone? No exit! So, of course, we pushed the "help" button and explained that we were in the small minority that evening of phone-less people. Someone somewhere pushed a button and released us from captivity at no cost. 

In some sense the arrival and ubiquity of smart phones has streamlined some things. And eliminated the need for other things all together. You no longer need a camera to take most day-to-day photos. You no longer need "audiophile" equipment to listen to music. You no longer need to buy music on physical media you can generally stream anything you want through your phone. You don't need to have a newspaper physically delivered to your house, you can get it on your phone. Plane tickets and boarding passes? On the phone. Medical test results? Phone. Credit cards? Naw. ApplePay on your phone. Remote control for your camera? Nope, app on the phone. Egg timer? Phone. Encyclopedia Brittanica? Phone. Flashlight? Phone. Check your investments? Phone. Read Michael Johnston's blog? Phone. Want food? Door Dash --- on your phone. Want someone to chew your food for you? .... not just yet.

The phone and its friends, the laptop and the iPad all conspire together, along with A.I., to fill every moment of modern life with tasty, alluring content and convenience. And they are so, so, so addictive. I often see people in moments of panic when they have misplaced their phone and are unable to find it again within seconds. The panic is palpable, extensive, in some sense ( imagined loss of control) terrifying. And the hidden costs of all this "convenience" while mostly hidden, is outrageous. There are hundreds of dollars spent monthly in keeping the connections to your family's cellphones alive. Many apps and streaming services come with never-ending subscription costs. But the real cost is the disconnection with actual, visceral happiness. The content, taking advantage of human nature, has successfully filled for most people whatever empty spaces there were in people's lives. Now they are busy all the time. And it may turn out that the quiet, unscheduled, empty spaces turn out to be the most important part of life --- at least when it comes to real happiness and calm satisfaction. The unscheduled moments. Sitting quietly watching the sunrise. Walking without agenda or end goal; just for the sake of moving and seeing life beyond your usual neighborhood. Meeting up with people just to see what they have to say.

When I go to a restaurant the last thing I want to do is monitor my phone. Or watch my dining companion sneaking peeks at the screen of their phone. I've pretty much stopped going out to see movies because other people's attention spans have been so severely eroded that they need to look at the bright and glittery screens of their phones even more often than they look at the giant screen in front of them that they paid to experience. I am not delighted to see bright flashes of blue screens bounce around a dark auditorium while all the action I paid to see is up on the singular screen. I think we've hit the point where people's screen addictions are harming them. Not just a random person here and there but the majority of our first world population. And no, Karen is not a good enough driver to both navigate a school zone in her Suburban SUV, at speed, while holding a latte in one hand and texting with the other. So, in fact, the always on screen is daily, hourly and minute by minute endangering innocent bystanders' lives.

We as photographers benefit from streamlining life. Cutting out the distractions of contrived convenience and everyday always on life in order to be able to bring more intentionality to the things we photograph. To see with intensity instead of trying to multitask between work, domestic connection and social media. I guess my challenge to everyone would be, Can you disconnect for hours at a time just to really enjoy actual life? To experience uninterrupted satisfaction?

I try to streamline by leaving my phone at home. If I need to bring a phone to pay for Austin's silly, city parking fees (which no longer accept, in most locations, cash or credit cards but can only be accessed online) I buy parking time, turn the phone off and leave it in the car while I run my errands or make photographs. I let my friends and family know that email rules apply, for me, as far as responding to texts is concerned: I'll get back to you by the end of the business day, or, where applicable, in 24 hours. I am not an emergency room doctor or firefighter. I am not ON CALL. You cannot reach me instantaneously, on a whim, "just to check in." You think you are having a medical emergency? Call 911.

I don't know if this has occurred yet in your geographic local but most businesses I deal with (coffee shops, camera stores, grocery stores, bookstores, etc.) no longer take cash. Your folding, paper money is no longer in vogue. So I carry with me one credit card. It works for everything. I have no affinity cards, no store cards, no duplicate cards, no separate cards for business. Just a credit card. It works everywhere. It's a Visa card. You can tap it. It's all purpose. I pay it off every month, like clockwork. Having one point of payment simplifies accounting and makes it easier for me to keep track of expenses. I don't care about "points" or "cash back" or any other permutation of credit cards which might encourage one to "spend more money to save more money." 

We have cars. We live in Texas. But now that my schedule doesn't include working for clients I try to take the one bus that exists about a half mile from my house and which goes directly into downtown as often as I can. Yes, I can tap my credit card upon entering the bus and pay my fare that way. In a nice way riding the bus in order to go downtown streamlines my street photography process because I don't need to pay attention to traffic, find parking in downtown and pay $20-$40 to park somewhere inconvenient. Yeah, good luck finding a metered space...  I pay a dollar and fifty cents for the bus ride and arrive in downtown unhurried and unmoored from the time clock. Same thing on my return to the neighborhood. 

Another thing I find sadly funny is the way people, in general, vacation. Most working people in our area would tell you that they are scheduled so tightly they barely sleep. Between the demands of corporate jobs, shuttling multiple kids from one activity to the next, shopping, watching football games on TV, staying up late to answer emails from their company's overseas offices and getting everything ready to hit the ground at the same speed the next day they barely have a moment to breathe. So, after half a year of this insanely frenetic activity they feel entitled to a vacation. But rather than finding a nice place to chill out, tune out and relax they bring the same process of daily work life to their vacations. Rushing their families to crowded airports, going from tourist intensive city to another tourist city every day. Never lingering long enough in one place to really know it, much less enjoy it. Tight schedules dictated by airline schedules, the tyranny of hotel check out times, group tours and the whims of restauranteurs who routinely tell the most frenzied tourists that they can accommodate them at the 4:30pm seating or the 11:15pm seating but, sadly, there is nothing in prime time. 

The average tourists come home jet-lagged, sniffling with whatever virus they caught from other tourists on the plane, and so exhausted from the tightly timed break from work that work starts to look relaxing. We don't do that. We pick a place, land there and spend a week or so diving into the experience. Quality of attention instead of quantity of destinations.

Routines are nice. Not making unnecessary decisions is nice. If you live somewhere wonderful it's probably always going to be better than anywhere you go on a trip; especially while on a budget. We've both traveled so much over the years, for work, that the idea of a nice vacation, for me, is trying new restaurants in our city, sitting in a comfortable chair in our lovely house, catching up on reading. But never reading non-fiction!!! Always traveling through an imagined life created by gifted writers. Never reading about how to maximize my efficiency or anything about an interesting battle between nations in 1395. Or about investing. Or about diets. Why make your brain work on stuff it can't possibly enjoy? Why when there is so much valuable fiction to be read?...

I've given up scheduling lunches or coffee get togethers with anyone who is: habitually late. often on their phones. rude to restaurant or coffee shop employees. makes the restaurant check into a complicated spreadsheet of who owes what. Life is too short. I'll also include people who put their phones on the table. Invite others to join us without notifying me about the additions. Chew with their mouths open. Talk too loud. Talk too much.  Life is way too short. 

So, kill your phone. Turn off unnecessary subscriptions. Stop bucket listing your life and just find out the things you really enjoy. Things you'd likely do if you had all the time in the world and no one to listen to you brag about your latest bucket list cross off. Schedule less. Don't feel like you always have to join in. Stop going to Super Bowl parties if you really don't enjoy passively watching football. Don't reflexively respond to every text. Set fewer goals. Sleep in. Drink coffee more slowly. Savor. Walk further. Take a camera with you but don't set goals for your camera, your photography or your "legacy for the future." Not everything you've touched needs to be archived. In fact, the less time you spend archiving all that stuff the happier you'll probably be. Instead of thinking about legacy or how history will treat you spend that time enjoying the present moment. The person in front of you. The food you always wanted to try. The Now-ness of it all.

You can rush through life but it's all going to be over too quickly no matter how you schedule or what you get done. If you streamline out all the stuff you really didn't want to do in the first place you'll have a hell of a lot more time for the things you really did. 

The blog was down because it was getting hammered with hundreds of thousands of pageviews. It seems to be resolved so here we are. But, as a reminder to the people who were "annoyed", the blog exists for my enjoyment as much as yours. When you get "annoyed" because the free content was unavailable for 24 hours it annoys me that you are annoyed. And when it annoys me it all starts to feel like work. Like something that needs to be scheduled and maintained. And when it feels too much like work I'll be happy to switch it to "authors only" and limit access to only one person. Me. 

The blog is here only because people still come here and read it. Say "hello" once in a while so we know you're here and not watching sports on TV instead.