I've been mulling over a concept that reviewers of the Leica Q2 keep mentioning. And how it applies to my cameras.

I photographed this at the Blanton Museum. When I wrote about the photo a while back I mentioned that at 100% magnification you can clearly see the weave of the sweater the person in the frame is 

wearing. Down to the threads. Part of the coolness of a 47 megapixel camera and 

a really, really good 50mm lens.

I'm not really price sensitive when it comes to cameras; but I'm thinking you've guessed that by now. If Leica made their Q2 with lenses other than the 28mm I might consider buying one and trying to convince myself that I'd finally be able to do great art with it. What focal length lens would I like? Nothing exotic. How about a 40mm or a 50mm? And I'd be happy enough if it was an f2.0 and satisfyingly sharp when used wide open. But alas. They haven't offered an alternate configuration. I'd be happy to co-brand one with them as the Visual Science Lab Normal Limited Edition...

But the concept I keep hearing from everyone (Leica and reviewers) is that the sensor in the Q2 is so good, and the 28mm lens on the front is so exquisite, that one could consider the camera as an all purpose, multi-focal length, imaging tool because the combination of the high resolving sensor and the equally detailed performance of the lens means you can do a bunch of serious cropping in order to get just the angle of view you want with no fuss. So, if you want a normal focal length look you could crop down to an APS-C style crop and you would get yourself a Leica 42mm lens for free. Or at least for no extra charge. Sure, you'll only have about 23.5 megapixels left to work with but I think most of us would agree that it's enough for just about anything you may desire. And those would be Red Dot/Leica pixels into the bargain. 

While I like the idea of a flexibility in lens selection (and being able to take only one lens along with me) I don't particularly care for the idea that I'll be composing in a very wide frame and having to use my limited powers of visual conservation to derive, at the time of shooting, exactly how I might be cropping. If I have an EVF at my disposal I'd like to see the crop while I compose the shot. 

I know that some of you can look at a hugely wide image in a finder and decide, unerringly, just exactly how you'll crop it in the future, and that you can do so without recomputing even an inch of variance after the fact. But I can't. I want to see the frame lines, the boundaries, the edges of the imagined frame. That's probably why the Leica Q2 is not on my short list of drool-worthy cameras....

But the idea of being able to fine tune focal lengths centered around one lens started me thinking and the concept keeps circling back around in my brain and taunting me. 

On Sunday night I went to a working performance of graduating senior drama and performance students at Zach Theatre's Nowlin rehearsal space. The space is huge and great for dance and movement. It can also hold a fairly big crowd of parents and friends. But where the space falls down is in the lighting. Since it's a rehearsal space and not a performing space the lighting is just barely utilitarian for the purpose. Buzzy, flickery florescent lights set high, high, high up on the ceiling about 30 feet up. No side lighting at all, and a black curtain spread across the back wall. I was volunteering for this one; just for the fun of seeing all the new talent, and the joy of playing with two new lenses. Lenses that I will quickly admit were not well thought out for this particular situation....

I'd packed two S1R bodies, the Sigma 35mm f1.4 and 85mm f1.4 Art lenses, and not much else. I didn't know we'd have an audience of any size but when I arrived the space was set up with at least 100 folding chairs. There wasn't a fixed stage and I couldn't get closer to the talent than the first row of audience seating. Hmmm. 

I'd be fine with ensemble shots, set up, multiple actor scenes, and anything with two or more people involved but there was a whole program full of individuals who would be doing dramatic readings, singing solos, dancing and standing in a wide sea of black drape. If I had been shooting this as a stage show I certainly would have brought along the 70-200mm lens for tight, individual shots. At 200mm I'd have a shot at making mid-torso to top of head shots too. But I came less prepared than usual and immediately felt photographically under-equipped.

Until the Leica/One camera/One lens concept floated back into my consciousness. 

I had 47.5 megapixel cameras in my hands as well as fast, state-of-the-art lenses. I didn't need to worry about getting sharp images from either lens and, if I used them at f1.4, or even at f2.0, I could keep the ISOs low enough to make certain I was getting optimum image quality in the files. 

Then I found the Ext. Teleconverter Mode in the camera menu. I could easily toggle between a full view and a 1.4X crop. This would give me (with the 35mm lens) both a normal 35mm and a bit tighter 50mm look without much loss of quality. And, to make me more comfortable the frame would be accurately depicted across the entire EVF. With the 85mm lens I would also be able to get (and properly view) a second focal length of about 120mm which would get me into the compositional zone I wanted. 

To use the crop/teleconverter mode I would have to set my camera to the "medium" file size setting and "make do" with a "paltry" 23.5 megapixels. Woe is me.... (sarcasm implied).

So, with two lenses I got four different focal lengths: 35, 50, 85 and 120. The files were all much more than adequate and they tightened up well in post production. 

All of this craziness got me thinking about another assignment that's coming up on Thursday. I'll be shooting lifestyle portraits on location at a high tech company that offices in a beautiful building downtown. This might also be a "two lens X2" shoot. I'm planning on taking the Panasonic 50mm f1.4 S Pro and the Sigma 85mm Art lens and using the flexibility of the teleconverter mode on the camera to give me more options. There is even a "zoom" option that will allow me to use every length between the normal angle of view and the maximum (1.4X) crop. Now, rather than looking for new, precise focal lengths, like a 100mm portrait lens (a nice length) I can take advantage of the very high performing and very fast lenses I already own. 

In the instance of the lifestyle shoot on Thursday you might wonder why it's so important to see the "crop". Well, I'll have an art director and client in tow on that shoot and would only like to show them the actual crop rather than showing them a full frame version made at the widest angle and then asking them to use their imaginations. Funny how that doesn't work in most advertising situations.....

The one caveat to working this way is that the teleconverter option is only available for Jpegs. If I decide that I have to shoot in raw then were back to traditional camera and lens use and I'll incorporate the 70-200mm if I need something longer than the 50mm and 85mm. I'll bring them all with me and see what works best. 

Now, off to call Leica and see if they want to sponsor my VSL limited edition Q2 with a 50mm Summicron on the front. I'll need to approve the special denim fabric "leather" and add my arcane signature somewhere before we finalize everything. But I need to let them know that I can be a bit showy and might want to have more than one Red Dot on the camera body. And I might want the dots a bit bigger.....

This is what Studio Dog thought of the idea when I mentioned it to her:

I've heard and read so much about iPhones that I thought I'd take mine for a walk. It's good but....... (spoiler: still going need real cameras for the good stuff...).

Everybody tells me the Lumix S1R and the 50 S Pro are too heavy to carry around on walks so I took them seriously and decided I'd stroll as the other 95% do and just take along my iPhone. It's an XR and it's supposed to have a great camera and lens. I thought I'd give it a whirl and see if it's really The Astronaut and not the Rocket... (secrets of space travel). To see if I could buy into all the iPhone excitement and use my ever present phone in lieu of a $3700 camera and a $2300 lens. 

I started by documenting my departure from the house. As you can see from the driveway, it's all Subaru all the time. Mine is the one on the left. I had to get the bigger one so I can fit in all my photo junk and haul it around. I've had the vehicle for almost a year and have yet to go "off road" or to drive on ice and/or snow. So much for all wheel drive.

I did the usual Sunday walk. I parked on the south side of the river that bisects downtown Austin and walked over the bridge that you've already seen too often in blog posts. I did take some images of familiar buildings and venues so I could make real comparisons.

I have to give the phone credit for at least three things I like about shooting with it, speaking technically: I like that it does a very cool, automatic, multiple frame HDR file that just looks nice and "open" without looking stupid. I like that the phone seems to always nail exposure. And I like even better that the color balance seems to be pretty exact no matter what the shooting conditions are. 

Culturally, I like that I can stop and take photos of anything and anyone and no one bats an eye or gives me a second look. You could probably photograph in the middle of a nuclear submarine and the authorities would think you just needed something catchy for your Instagram feed. 

On a non-photographic note, I did love having the video capability be totally dumbed down and instantly accessible. And it looks good too. I did a slow motion clip of an escalator in a hotel and basically, all I had to do was select "video" and push the button. Nice. 

As a camera for documentation and quick snapshots the iPhone XR is perfectly fine. I hate only having the wide angle lens on it and wish I had the same selection of lenses that the newer iPhone 11 Pro boasts but after my afternoon of shooting I'm not ready to believe that I can ditch all the traditional camera gear I own and make myself happy with the results of even the best phone right now. And I'll tell you why: When you blow up the tiny pixels from the tiny sensor the images seem to fall apart pretty quickly. They hold together well enough for Instagram, on a phone screen, but they do get noisy when you push the exposure a little; and that's from frames taken in the best light. I also miss long, fast lenses and the aerobic exercise of carrying them all around 😆

While I was out and around I saw some funny signage. The one just above is probably my favorite. It's an ad for the second best taco chain in town, Torchy's (the best chain taco place is TacoDeli; by a good margin....). But I have to say that Torchy's does a good job with their pleasantly irreverent signage.

Le Politique. 

As an aside, I'd always wondered about a restaurant on 2nd St. called, Le Politique. I finally tried it this past week with an old friend who came in from out of town. On a Thursday at lunch time the place was almost empty. The food was good, the service was great, and the atmosphere most congenial for a slow, talky lunch; but the main dining rooms were nearly empty. Made even more obvious because it's such a large space. I also tried their attached Parisian-style bakery on Sunday and their pricy pastries are actually quite good. You forget what you spent on them after the second or third bite.... but really! $5.00 for a chocolate croissant (take out)???

Nice Holiday spirit in the windows at ToyJoy on Second St. I personally love the avocado ornament (above) and wouldn't mind having another set of Rock'Em, Sock'Em Robots. (just below).

Some seriously mixed up signage.

Which is it? Coffee or Wine?

Or hot wine in a coffee cup?

Thick on dynamic range. Thin on post process-ability.

A good thing about wide angle lenses is their ability to get in the whole span of this mural, just off Congress Ave. I appreciated the iPhone for that since I so rarely carry around anything shorter than a 35mm.

All three days of Fall in Austin. 

WTF? A culture in conflict. The happy hour patrons want so badly to sit outside at the bars and cafes but are too soft to handle the cooler weather. The W Hotel had three or four of these "bar tent" set ups for their patrons. I am instantly reminded of bird cages or terrariums. For humans 

hell bent on being part of the sidewalk society. Sad. Tragic. Funny. 

Near the end of my walk I bought an apple pastry from Le Publique, along with a boring and bitter cup of drip coffee and enjoyed half of my mid-afternoon repast in the shadows of the former Seaholm power plant. The other half I poured out....

So, here's the TLBREW (too long but read every word): Phone cameras are nice and easy to use but as soon as you move from viewing the results on another phone or on an iPad you start to notice the weak spots and limitations of the tiny sensors. It's nice to have a "take everywhere" appliance but I think counting on a phone camera as a sole art tool is premature. Keep your camera. Appreciate the added potential. Even if you never exploit it you'll at least know you could have....

Differences of opinion stoically tolerated. Have at it: 

A recent post at TheOnlinePhotographer had me back looking through files to see if I've been adding too much contrast and over-sharpening to black and whites versus how we used to do it under the enlarger.

Rebecca L. 

I certainly get where Michael Johnston is coming from. I see a lot of stuff that starts life as a color camera file, gets dragged through post processing and unceremoniously converted to monochrome without any color filtration naunce, and then gets flogged into submission via high contrast, high clarity slider action, followed by gratuitous monkeying around with skin tones making them both too light and too unbelievably smooth. Some of my friends say Luminar 4.0 can fix all this but my rejoinder is, "why mess up the files in the first place?" 

The file above is one I did of Rebecca with LED lights bounced into a big umbrella, in a room that was already swimming with diffuse window light. My old Sony A7Rii struggled to hold detail in the highlights in the original color file even though that camera was widely regarded to have a "wide dynamic range." 

I don't like to overfill shadows so I left the darker areas exactly as they mapped over from the conversion. I think the flesh tones on her hands are just right and I think I've finally found the right exposure to keep the highlights in check on the right side of Rebecca's face while not letting the shadows submerge too deeply. It's a balancing act, but it was the same in the days of film. 

But, it's interesting to remember that film didn't have a baked in contrast setting. It was different depending on how you developed it and in what you developed it. Another layer of interpretation was deciding which grade of paper you would use in printing, and then even how you developed the prints. 

We spent a lot of time in the darkroom burning and dodging to get the tones that Michael seems to be referencing but we tend to forget that in the current time of convenient sliders.....

Below are some other black and white expressions; each subjectively processed to meet my idea of what the final images should look like....for me. And yes, original prints did all have their own color...

A Hasselblad homage to a croissant. And an elegant hand...

Lou.

 At the Ellsworth Kelly installation.

Blanton Museum grounds. 

Mixing old and new. The combination of the Lumix S1R and the old, Contax Y/C Zeiss 50mm f1.7 lens.

The holidays are upon us! We were at our friends' house for dinner recently and I walked into the dining room to look at the table before we all got seated. There were simple flower arrangements on the table and I found both the simplicity of presentation and the diffuse window light provided by a cloudy late afternoon very beautiful. 

I walked back into the foyer and retrieved my camera from the coat rack so I could make a number of photographs. The camera I chose to travel with was an odd choice for a casual evening with old friends; I brought along a Lumix S1R (the 47.5 megapixel model) and had paired it with one of the lenses I have owned the longest, the Zeiss 50mm f1.7 (manual focus) that was originally made for Y/C's Contax line. 

I've kept the lens around because it's adaptable to all the mirrorless cameras I've ever owned and it is small, light and well mannered. While many recent AF lenses ("nifty fifties") in the wide end of the aperture range are not as sharp as many of us would like when used wide open, or near wide open, the old, manual focus Zeiss model sharpens up beautifully by f2.0 which makes the effect of the foreground and background going out of focus more apparent and interesting. The plane that is actually fully sharp stands out more convincingly.

The old Contax lens is a nice companion for the hyper-resolution Lumix S1R because its lightweight and smaller profile provide a more harmonious balance to the overall package than any of the current Panasonic S1 lenses. Often, when I'm heading out for something social I'll choose between this lens  and the Sigma 45mm f2.8. Both are elegantly simple and yet feel solid and competent. 

One of the promises of mirrorless cameras, with their shorter lens mount to sensor dimensions, which we tend to overlook is the ability to use carefully selected lenses from yesteryear. I have a set I've curated in my head which includes the Contax 50mm and also the Contax 85mm f1.4 as well as the Leica 80mm f1.4 Summilux (R) and the Zeiss 21mm that was on the market recently in the Nikon or Canon mount. There are several Olympus OM lenses that would fit the bill as well. While there are, or will be, modern take no prisoners version of these lenses there are times when different rendering or different characteristics can be interesting and more in line with one's visual intentions. 

And if "ultimate imaging" isn't the goal of a social evening with friends then an older, calmer, smaller, lighter lens is probably a better choice than something like the Panasonic 50mm f1.4 S Pro (which feels like the size and weight of a 70-200mm zoom lens). Just trying to interject some rational common sense into my choices....

Curious which camera and lens you bring to dinner....

Filling in Around the Edges. How is that Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art Lens in Real Life Use? I posted some images from this morning's camera walk.

A winter day at Barton Springs Pool. No charge for admission today. I guess not that many people want to swim in a spring fed pool when it's 38 degrees outside....

Click on the images to see them bigger. Okay?

To see a tight crop on the lifeguard scroll down to the next image.... (and so on). 

I've been trying out a new L-Mount lens. It's the Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art lens. I've heard all kinds of things about this model lens when used on various other camera systems but Sigma have re-worked the lens for the new L-Mount and I was hoping I wouldn't see issues such as the front or back focusing that seemed to plague some Nikon users. The previous consensus about the original product was that the optical performance was wonderful but that it didn't focus quickly and, many times, did not focus accurately on different DSLRs. Since Sigma is part of the L-Mount Alliance ( along with Leica and Panasonic ) I feel encouraged to believe that any issues incumbent on the first foray have been fixed. 

When Precision Camera got the L-Mount version of the 35mm Art lens in I was happy to see that its arrival coincided with a sale. From now until the end of the year the lens should be on sale from $899 to $649. Even with my poor math skills that seems to be a $249 (USD) savings over its usual price. That is not a special price for an open box or refurbished model; it's the price for a new, warranted product in an original box.

Since our vast organization here at the VSL (The Visual Science Lab)  is otherwise occupied we don't have the luxury of running the lens through our usual, thorough and exhaustive testing routine. Instead, I took the lens out with me for a walk so I could shoot a bunch of test frames and see whether the lens performs well and whether it has any character. It was mounted on a new Lumix S1R and this time I shot all my tests in raw format and carefully converted them in Lightroom. I cannot blame any real or imagined imaging shortcomings on in-camera Jpeg processing, for a change. About a third of the images were shot as ISO 400 files, another third at ISO 200 and the finally third (the sunny shots) were shot at ISO 100. 

I could pontificate about what I saw and toss in some gibberish about nano-acuity but I think this time we'll just let the test images to the talking. While I shot them at the full (47.5 megapixel) resolution of the camera I did downsize them to 6,000 pixels on the long side in order to put them up here on Blogger. The program won't show the full size file but I've provided some 100% crops from about a third of the images so you can see the wide image and then get an idea of the sharpness and resolution by looking at the magnified version. 

I've only had the lens for a day but I can't find anything in my samples not to like about it. I think I'll keep it. 

One thing: had I used this lens last year (2018) during which time I was mostly shooting with Panasonic G9 cameras and associated lenses I would have bemoaned the size and weight of the Sigma 35mm Art but after spending a few weeks with both the Sigma 85mm Art lens and the Panasonic 50mm S Pro lens I now find the 35mm lens agile, compact (ha! ha!) and altogether charming. Context is everything.

Crop from above.

The historic Barton Springs Bath House. The changing areas are roofless. Drones are discouraged.

Landscaping adjacent to the Bath House, full frame. 

A close crop of the image above this one. 

Honestly, if you click on this image it will give you a good idea of the bokeh when the lens is used at f2.0, or in that ballpark. Harder to see how much the background recedes and how well it softens if you are looking at a tiny image. 

Full frame photograph from the South side of the Pool. 

A tight crop of the berries on the top two branches of the image above this one. 

Full frame ladder shot. 

Tight crop of part of the ladder. 

Here is a shot I took in my quest to generate purple artifacts around the small branches which are backlit by the sky. The image below shows a tight crop of the branches in the top right quadrant.

Looking for purple chromatic aberrations in vain.

Still looking for purple. Check out the image below if you want a crop of the branch just to the right of center, in the center.

Nothing do do with the lens but I loved this heart spray painted on the cement trash can holder along the Hike and Bike Trail next to the Lake. 

Early morning. Still a fog settled in over the lake. With the sun just rising way off in the background.

Full Frame.

The center leaves from the image above this one. Near or at wide open. 

Kirk coming to grips with composition using something other than a 50mm lens.

Hey! It's not so bad. I could get used to this.....

One more at full frame (above)  followed by a tight crop (below)

Aiming to get myself so fence texture. My paint job looks soooo  much better. 

And now we're at the end of the line. 

My conclusion? You could do a hell of a lot worse in a fast 35mm lens; especially for the current price. 

I think my current system is now fully built out. Let's see what Panasonic and Sigma (and Leica?) come out with next. Thanks for plowing all the way through. Happy Holidays. 

No links, no sales here. - Kirk