In the recent past I spent nearly every Sunday afternoon walking around Austin's vibrant and strange downtown, documenting everything I could find that either changed or stayed the same (hmmmmm). That ambulatory pleasure fell to the wayside when my dad entered memory care about a year and a few months ago, victim of vascular dementia. I spent my Sundays bringing him chocolate and the New York Times, hanging out with him and sharing lunches.
Now we're into a new phase and Sundays aren't the best days to meet with doctors, nurses, administrators and even lawyers. Mondays seem to work better for everyone involved in my father's care and I've re-oriented the schedule. He no longer is interested in reading the newspaper. He hasn't requested chocolates in a while. Nothing that ties me to "Sundays Only."
Today was typical of the new scheduling, I headed down this morning to supervise the delivery of a hospital bed for him. Of course some stuff got fucked up and I had to jump in and motivate people to get things done in a timely manner. But that's okay; that's one of my jobs right now. But being there on a Monday returned to me the area pleasure of the Sunday walk.... So that's what I did yesterday.
This time I went wildly minimalist. I took only a Canon G15 and a couple extra batteries in the pocket of my khaki shorts. I never needed the extra batteries because I seem not to shoot with the wild abandon I once did. I'm also getting used to finally accepting "dirty baby diaper hold" and using the rear screen on my camera (since the little tunnel finder is less than optimal). Maybe I am more accepting because I finally got a new prescription for my glasses and, with bifocals, I can actually (mostly) see what's on the screen...
But the little camera is surprisingly good. Really good. Well, if your final target is images on a (very cool) blog or scattered through Instagram. I like shooting with the lens nearly wide open all the time and I keep being amazed at the really good image stabilization that's built into the system. I try to shoot my G15 mostly at ISO 80 but really had no fear popping up to ISO 200 or even 500 to shoot interior spaces (see library pix below).
Wow. It's so different to carry something the size of a deck of playing cards instead of a brick around one's neck. And still being able to come home and make nice photographs from the raw files.
The image above, and all the images below, are
from the new Austin Public Library.
all handheld and unburdened by deep thoughts.
7 comments:
You are being kind with your characterization of the viewfinder on those cameras. They are worse than useless IMO. I had a G10 that I loved and drowned (by accident) that was replaced by a G11 which I still have but needs repair. Does Precision Camera do repairs? I'll be down your way in June.
BTW that last photo looks like it could be a modern Hogwarts. Do the stairs move?
Those old Canon "G" series cameras were quite remarkable: Canon seemed to pour a vast amount of their expertise into the lenses, and the larger than normal sensors could deliver good results at ISOs that we would have considered the upper limit in the days of film. Yes, the optical viewfinder was hopelessly inaccurate (why did Canon produce a great series of cameras with such cheap and awful viewfinders?), but they were undoubtedly great cameras. I say this as an owner of a G9, complete with Canon wide and tele auxiliary lenses (which dwarf the camera body).
There's a a great review of the G9 on the Luminous Landscape site (paywall, $1/month) from back in the old days before the site turned to crap after Michael Reichmann died:
https://luminous-landscape.com/canon-powershot-g9-review/
The author, Nick Devlin, used it on a trip to Tokyo, leaving his Leica M8 in his hotel room.
For my now dead Fuji XF1 pocket camera I got a thin pocket loupe (f=4") and made a folding screen loupe of stiff cardboard and stiff tape that I taped to the camera, it became about 1/3" thicker. If you use it just for composing without judging sharpness a thin Fresnel loupe does it too. (I'd have preferred thin sheet metal but didn't have the tools.)
No disturbing sun any more and better stability, and it unfolds quickly.
If you like the idea and want to lessen development time (it took me three or four iterations) I'll be happy to send you mine (although it's become rather shabby). (I'll just make a new one if i need it again.)
I assume the camera is quiet for the library pictures. That's a big plus. Those older cameras don't go obsolete, they just get forgotten amid the new camera hype.
I assume the camera is quiet for the library pictures. That's a big plus. Those older cameras don't go obsolete, they just get forgotten amid the new camera hype.
One feature of my old Canon G3 is that it can powered externally, which is good for time lapse work. It's very time consuming trying to track down models that have this feature.
@Robert Roaldi, a lot of modern cameras have the ability to both charge their batteries and to be powered by the newer USB-C connectors. Obviously, you do have to squint at the fine print to see whether the camera is capable of running off USB-C power, or just charges the batteries.
Beyond that is using dummy batteries connected to a external power source. It has been my experience that for the mid/upper end Panasonic cameras, that Panasonic does provide an external wall power solution. Sometimes the Panasonic solution is not available, but there are usually clones of that solution available.
Olympus on the other hand until the E-m1x came out seems to go out of their way to make things difficult. The official Olympus method for their mid/upper end cameras (E-m5, E-m1) is that you first have to buy the extra cost battery grip (HLD-6/7/8/9). Once you have purchased the grip, you then have to purchase a high priced cable that supplies 9v power to the grip. To top things off, until the E-m1 mark II came out, the plug on the grip was a special plug used nowhere else except for the grip (and some of the earlier 4/3rds cameras). The E-m1 mark II now uses the standard 5.5mm x 2.1mm jack on the HLD-9, so you can pick up a decent A/C adapter for about $10 instead of the $120 Olympus wants for the AC-5 cable.
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