Revisiting a film portrait. The medium format negative was scanned on a Noristu printer.

Old school portrait. 

I finished my time critical work early this afternoon and I spent some time looking around the web for potential camera bargains. I found two at Precision Camera's website; on the used digital section. Both were Mamiya Pro cameras (digital only) that sported the popular 80mm f2.8 lens AND an Aptus II-5 22 megapixel digital back. Both in EX+ condition.  I'd shot with the Aptus-7 back and found it to be really good in its time. The Aptus II-5 back was introduced for around $8000 in 2009 and boasted 12 (real) stops of dynamic range and (real) 16 bit files. Oh, and the sensor size was 36 by 48mm. The finders on these cameras are/were very good and the camera, lens and back combo retailed for around $12,000 new. Precision Camera has two of them listed for $1299 each. Less than the price of a new Fuji X100V. And yes, that includes the lens.

I almost called to reserve one but I took a beat and remembered that I promised myself I would not buy medium format camera until someone put a model on the market with a (native) square sensor and a sensor size of at least 48 by 48mm. My real interest right now is in acquiring a perfect, used Leica SL as cheaply as I can.

There are several Leica dealer sites that I've been following which each have a fair number of used 9+ condition SLs in inventory. I'll explain my interest in the SL in a different post but my goal today was to take a run at seeing how firm listed prices are from a representative dealer. I selected what looked like the highest serial number, like new in box, camera, priced at $2599 and asked, pleasantly, if the prices were absolutely firm or if they were in flux, what with the imminent arrival of the newer/new SL2 bodies. It's also good to know that the SL came to market with a $7500 price tags while the improved SL2 debuts at $5900 (or around there).

I got an e-mail back almost immediately letting me know that I could have that camera for $2295 and it would include free, second day shipping. I think I'll wait a while and see if they drop down under $2,000 in a mid-to-short time frame.

A program note: I lived in Turkey for two years and I really do enjoy bargaining for purchases. It's fun. 

Emboldened by this new information I may make an offer on one of the used, excellent condition Panasonic GX-8's now taking up space at my local retailer. If the stock markets can dive 35% and still find buyers then why not the same with aging digital cameras?

The image above reminded me that I originally purchased the 47 megapixel S1R cameras (X2) to use in the square aspect ratio as a portrait camera. I guess I'd better find some people who need to be photographed from six or more feet away and see if we can't get busy making more portraits. Time is always running short.

virus note: The city of Austin seems to be doing a decent job of social distancing and other measures to slow down Covid-19 spread. We have just recorded 160 positives for the disease along with one death. The local health authorities say that the person who died was over 70 and had "significant" and severe pre-existing conditions. One interesting data point is that a large percentage of people testing positive are under 40 years old.

My local Trader Joe's is playing an "A" game in their ongoing engagement with our community. They have been fully stocked for most of the week, have made special accommodations for people over 60, and have been managing customer controls (distancing, anti-hoarding) nicely and firmly. I'm impressed. I was in and out in under 7 minutes today --- it took me longer to wipe everything down with Chlorox wipes when I got home --- and I was able to get everything I needed, including Trader Joe's hand sanitizer.

I hope everyone is safe and sound. My "thoughts and prayers" are for all the people who suddenly find themselves out of work and feeling precarious. It's a tough position to be in, more so because we all hate uncertainty. Do what you can for the people who need it most. Might be a good year to shift your usual, generous donation to the opera over to the local food bank. Just a thought...

Stay safe and well fed. And don't forget to pick up and use that camera every day. KT

The hardest part of the "shelter in place" regimen is not being able to make portraits.

I've had enough to keep myself busy this week. Today I fixed a broken gate to the backyard. I also retouched ten really nice portraits I did on location for a law firm, just before the pandemic reared its ugly head in the U.S. I made my own lunch. I said, "yes, yes, yes!" when someone e-mailed and asked me if I'd like to bid on a nice video project we might do in August. I talked my friend, Joe, off the financial ledge for the second time this week ( a bad time, I think, to sell everything and buy an RV).

The house is stocked and the bills are paid but the one thing that's driving me a bit nuts is not being able to call a friend and set up a play date for taking portraits. I have all these great cameras and lenses just burning a hole in my camera bag and I can't really leave the neighborhood to point them at people and get them to smile. Can't have them in the studio either...

I did have fun retouching today and I do have a suggestion that should be in compliance with our current social distancing rules while being a breath of fresh air.

On the retouching: I photographed individual attorneys in an office that had a great view out the window of one of the offices looking out to the central Texas hill country. I lit each attorney as well as I could and tried my best to create lighting that would suggest a connection between interior and exterior. I also worked hard (but somewhat unsuccessfully) to keep a reflection of me and my camera out of the big window. But the new selection tools in P.S. make fixing that a breeze.

I shot the files with a Lumix S1R and the 24-105mm lens, mostly at 105mm. Knowing how well the camera's raw files handle the shadow areas, and how well they respond to the shadow sliders in post, I purposely underexposed the images by about two thirds of a stop which gave me a good degree of safety in terms of preserving highlights and the look outside the window. I used a variety of Godox flashes to light the subjects and the interiors and they all worked perfectly with the little remote controller/trigger in the hot shoe of my camera.

I brought them into PhotoShop via the raw converter and did the big lifting of exposure correction in the raw panel. I also did some rough cropping and a lot of color correction before opening the files into PhotoShop. It's my philosophy to do as much correction as possible in the raw files and then pray for forgiveness in the application.

Today I did a split of the controls between PhotoShop and  Luminar 4.0. I used Luminar as a plug-in so I could take advantage of its sky replacement feature to add a bit of glamor to the view outside the window. I've found Luminar to be pretty good as a sky replacer and general tweaking tool; even more so since I found the control that lets me put the cloudscapes and imported skies controllably out of focus with yet another slider. At some point the haze of boredom crept in and I started using a second Luminar control that allows you to add stuff to sky backgrounds you've put into files. I knew I had gone way too far when I put an eagle in the sky just over the shoulder of a younger lawyer. I laughed at myself but I made a copy of the file to share with him, just for fun.

Some of the controls in Luminar are very useful and I'm happy the program handles raw files.

I delivered an assortment of Jpegs, .PSDs and Tiffs to my clients at the end of the day and finally had the feeling that I'm getting something done while working at home.

On the first sunny day this week I'd had enough of walking through the various wings of the house, and looking out over the "estate." I got in my car and went for a medicinal drive. All the windows were sealed tight and all of the outside air comes in through a HEPA filter. I brought my own coffee so I'd never have to stop. I drove west and headed for Johnson City.

It was a beautiful day to drive through central Texas. The wildflowers are starting to bloom and, because of all the rain we've had, along with the mild temperatures, everything was lush and green. And the sky! With most people just hanging out in their homes the roads are essentially empty and there's no pollution or yellow haze at the horizon. The skies were the kind of luxurious blue that I remember from driving the Devil's Backbone highway in my youth.

I looped through Johnson City and the headed South to Blanco, Texas. Of course absolutely nothing but gas stations was open. But the empty roads, the forty thousand foot sky, and the splashes of roadside color were amazing. It was almost like moving through a living painting.

I never took a camera off the passenger seat to take a photograph. There were no people. But when I got home a couple of hours later I felt lighter, happier and less anxious. It was a good process. No one was hurt in its undertaking.

**************

How far are we taking our family commitment to social distancing? Well, we usually order pizza on Thursdays (a ritual left over from Ben's school years...) and I usually call in my order and then go pick it up. Today I went online to make my order and I pulled up short. There was no longer the option to drive over to the pizza place and pick up our order myself. Our only option was delivery.

I filled out all the order stuff online and paid for it with a credit card. I added a generous tip for the driver. But then Belinda asked me how I was going to deal with the box. Multiple people will have touched the pizza box by the time the pie make its way to me.

We actually had a quick meeting and worked out a plan. I would accept the box from the delivery guy and bring it to the welcome mat at the front door. I would then open the box and spread out the sides of the box. Belinda would bring our big, wooden pizza peel to the door and slide it under the pizza while being very careful not to touch the edges of the box. It worked! Once she had the pizza securely in the house I took the box to our recycling bin and tossed it in. Then I stepped into the open door of the house and drenched my hands with the sanitizer on the ledge near the door. Then I went into the kitchen and washed for 23 seconds with soap and lots of attention to every square centimeter of my hands.

Then we ate good pizza.

Life. It's a process.

How are you handling this day-to-day stuff?

Staying Home and Playing with My Time Machine.

If you are anything like me your rate of photographing far outstrips your rate of printing or post processing the pictures you are making. I have about ten banker's boxes filled with black and white negatives from the 1970s-2000. That's the amount left after fierce rounds of tossing out commercial stuff that no longer had value to me. (Every year I try to wipe out all the rote commercial work from the files that's five years old or older. Better for me to get it into the trash than burden the family with making choices later....).

While there are few to no silver linings to our current pandemic crisis the total pull back of work and projects certainly gives me time to search out and rediscover images I made twenty or thirty or more years ago and to evaluate them through the prism of years of experience.

This (above) was a small print I came across when I was looking around like a studio archeologist this morning. It's a photo I took back in 1984 or 1985 with a Pentax 6X7 camera and the 150mm f2.8  Pentax lens. I scanned the black and white negative sometime in the late 1990s and played around with selective gaussian blur in Photoshop. I was trying to match the feel of darkroom prints I used to make using a selective blurring tool called a "Pictrol."

I think my interest in selective blurring came from reading about how Richard Avedon achieved certain blurring effects in his prints in his earlier days, when he actually spent time in the darkroom. My techniques were different but motivated by the same aesthetic ideas. Pools of blur to put more attention on the sharper part of the images.

I love coming across tiny test prints like this one because it helps me to see a certain trajectory that still influences the work I do now.

I understand we may be socially distancing for quite a while longer and it's disheartening because...well...at heart I am a portrait photographer and that's pretty much off limits to me now. But as a  consolation I have a huge backlog of wonderful images to explore and the gift of time in which to explore them.

Being the eternal optimist I imagine a time in the very near future when we'll be unleashed from our isolation and the positive energy will flow back into every second of work we do going forward. "You don't miss your water till your well runs dry." It's up to you to dig a new well.

Latest news on the gear front. High speed camera storage is pleasant.

Samsung SSD Drive and SmallRig mounting clamp. 

As some of you know I bought a really interesting camera a while back. It's called a Sigma fp and while it's a bit limited as a still camera (you will NOT be photographing your kid's soccer game with one ---- unless you are a masochist...) it has some interesting features for those interested in playing around at one of the cutting edges of consumer video. The most interesting of those video features is that this is one of the few inexpensive (relative term) cameras that will allow you to capture video in a raw, uncompressed format. 

Shooting video in raw offers the same kind of flexibility that you are used to getting when shooting raw photographs. You can do so much color correction and exposure correction without "breaking" the files and adding nasty stuff like banding and digital noise.  You can pull amazing detail from the shadows and you'll find lots of detail hiding in what would have otherwise been blown highlights. 

But there is one big issue. You'll be working with files that are coming into your camera at up to 2400 Mbps if you make video at the highest quality settings = 4K 12 bit, uncompressed, 23.98, 4:4:4. It's a data rate that's much too fast for any commercially available SD card. It's ponderous amounts of information coming in at high velocity. 

If you want to play around with the fast, high bit depth, raw files you need a different memory solution and HDMI solutions are not going to fill the bill. 

The recommended fast storage is the Samsung T5 one or two terabyte SSD drive (the lower capacity 500 Gb drive is not certified to work by Sigma). It writes continuously at nearly 600 Mbps, sustained, which is fast enough to record the data set from the camera. I'm not sure I get the math since the drive seems to handle a lower amount than the max capable from the camera but video is variable and so is the data rate. With buffering I guess it all works out...

The drive is light and tiny and connects to the camera through its USB 3.1 port. It works pretty flawlessly with the Sigma camera and I haven't had any stalls or hiccups in my testing so far. The one thing you'll also need to figure out is how to mount the SSD drive to a cage or directly to your camera. I've built a universal, tripod mount cage from parts I get from SmallRig and they make a clamp connector specifically for the T5 drive which I can bolt onto my rig. Not completely elegant but very workable. 

Let's talk honestly though. Do I intend to shoot anything at the maximum data rate possible with the Sigma fp? Probably not. It's fun to play around with and it's scary to see how fast a one terabyte drive fills up. I doubt I will see the difference between 12 bit and 10 bit video just as I rarely see much difference between a 16 bit Photoshop file and an 8 bit Jpeg file on my iMac Pro 5K monitor. But, there may come a day when someone somewhere wants a perfect 30 second clip for a very specific purpose. I'll be ready...

For the rest of the time I will be able to use the SSD to get 12 bit, 1080 (FHD) files that I will have a lot of use for. Also, the bit depth will come in handy when Sigma gets around to creating a Log setting.

One important advantage that I don't see many people mentioning is that you can use the SSD for output at any file setting. That means you can go all the way to the 2 hour limit with smaller or less data intensive files without having to stop and change out memory cards. The flip side advantage is that when your long shoot is over you can plug the SSD directly into your computer for super fast downloads. Hell, if you want to play fast and loose you can even plug in and edit directly on the SSD. 

Pros will stridently suggest that a back-up is always necessary but if you are shooting for yourself, doing tests, working out the kinks or just trying something new, a back-up isn't always absolutely required. Just don't cry if you accidentally lose something. 

Sigma has a new firmware update for the fp. It's  1.02 and it's mostly just a bunch of bug fixes. I'll get around to updating mine today. 

Being a "silver lining" kind of guy I sure am relishing the current downtime as an opportunity to really learn the ins and out of my video gear. I never seem to have enough unstructured time to really dive in deep when we're working on a regular schedule...

A kindly intended note for people who blog for the $$$: You've got a bigger audience right now than you will when everyone goes back to work. You need to feed them content they love in very regular doses. You will be doing a community service. We all want stuff to read and stuff to take our minds off the crisis (me included). Now is not the time to decide that you too will take some time off. We need your stuff more than ever before. So, stop puttering around and get me some fresh content! And remember, we can read all about the virus everywhere else, you might consider writing stuff we enjoy instead. Like about cameras and lenses and photography. 

If we love your blog or your V-log then you are doing everyone a community service by stepping up and being consistent. Just a suggestion. 

Self-assignment is pretty cool. Unless you happen to be too self-critical. Who needs stress with their art? Don't we have clients for that?

I think I'm getting the hang of it. Of living with the new, weird and sometimes frightening normal that is. I mean I don't have any other options than to figure out how to cope and be happy. 

Here's a super quick story of momentary happiness: We haven't been stressing about toilet paper. I bought some back before the crisis really went into full meltdown/panic buying mode and a last look under that bathroom sink turned up six rolls of deluxe, Trader Joe's premium toilet paper. It hasn't been on my shopping list...

Ben was over for dinner last night and I cooked steaks, mashed potatoes and fresh asparagus finished with a nice lemon sauce. While he was here I loaded him up with some groceries. A half gallon of milk from Whole Foods, a bag of TJ's muesli, two containers of 2% Greek yogurt, some left over steak, a box of blueberries, etc. He was appreciative. 

When I looked in the fridge this morning I realized that I'd given away the last of my yogurt so I fired up the car (can I call my Subaru Forster a car?) and headed back over to Trader Joe's to restock. When I got there a little before 10 a.m. they had a special line set up to give priority to "seniors." I got in the regular line (there were eight of us) and someone from the store came over and offered me early entry. I shrugged and rendered myself compliant. 

I bought a few things. Some more yogurt (it makes your shutter finger more temporally accurate) and some more muesli as well as some of their wonderful, frozen, gluten and dairy free pancakes (a guilty pleasure) and I headed to the check out area with my little basket. A Trader Joe's employee approached me and asked me if I needed toilet paper. Thinking I might be able to use individual rolls as gifts for future clients (it must be incredibly valuable, right?) I said, "yes." She ran off to find me a package. Then another TJ's employee came up to me to see if I might need some hand sanitizer. And  he went off to find several bottles for me. I had no idea I looked so needy. I didn't see them proactively handing out TP or HS to anyone else. But, as we were all re-wiping our already wiped hands with Purell laden wipes for the twentieth time I thanked them for their kind attention. I thought I'd be pressing the "poor old senior" thing too far by asking them to carry my new toilet paper treasure to my car for me. 

Jeez. If I would have known how much people fawn over senior citizens I would have dyed my hair white a long time ago.... But I did feel taken care of and, at a glance, I did see that their inventory was up to snuff. I came home feeling more assured that we'll all get through this somehow. 

I have self assigned. I figure that if clients aren't in the mood to play I can certainly find some creative uses for this massive collection of cameras, lenses, lights and microphones that seem to be magnetically attracted to me. 

I'm writing a little ten minute movie I want to make. My audience will be easy to please because it's just me. I've already sold myself a ticket to the V.I.P. screening. The script seems to be about love and coffee in a dystopian time of mandatory social distancing. I'm sure I can find some actors here in Austin that are suddenly less busy than they were a month ago. I'm thinking I'll put aside a small budget to pay them for their time.

The beauty of something like this is that when self assigning, and aiming at an audience of 1, you get to decide how you want stuff to flow and how you want it to look. I'm thinking black and white. Lots of tight shots with long lenses. Maybe some slow motion coffee spills? Lots of b-roll at dusk with city lights in the background. And, of course, a happy ending. It goes without saying that I will cast beautiful people.

To add a formalist framework to the project I'm thinking of shooting it all raw on the Sigma fp which will force me to learn a bunch about the back end (editing) of the project and about color correcting with DaVinci Resolve. 

I am also pursuing another new-ish hobby. I'm taking a deep dive into the world of investing. I figure I've lived through enough recessions and near depressions to understand that the stock market sell off isn't going to be a permanent fixture and that it will recover; given time. I thought I'd take a certain amount of money and try my luck at the solar system's biggest casino = the stock market. 

With everyone panicking it seems to be a good time to have some new diversions. I'm learning all kinds of jargon and having chatty talks with my wealth management person. I have a budget that will work okay to make it fun and, of course, the passion is in the risk. I might chicken out of individual stock picks and sort through the clutter of index funds to see if I can make sense of it all. It can't be that hard, right? Seems like there's a recurring pattern: run up the market then scare the crap out of all the smaller, retailer investors, wait till they bail out of their holdings for fifty cents on the dollar and the ride it all back up again. They've been doing the same thing for more than a century and I thought I'd see if there was anything I could learn this time around. Buy low, sell high? or, as Warren Buffett is fond of saying, "Sell on greed, buy on fear." Might be a good time to invest in some photography studios, right? (kidding. Remember the old saying, "Wanna make a million dollars in photography? Start with ten million...). 

I just learned what an ETF is versus a traditional mutual fund. Filled me with a new sense of power and brilliance. Not looking forward to the blog post that might have to be written after I discover that even stocks can go to zero.  Hmmm. on second thought maybe this is why Belinda handles all the big investing stuff.... Maybe it is complicated after all. 

I'm finishing up the last of the portrait retouching orders here and after that I've got nothing pressing so I thought I'd take some time to make some non-instantly-perishable food and go out west to do some landscapes. Sounds like yet another self-assignment. But if I'm out of range I won't have to think about the fact that the studio and the house need a fresh coat of paint. 

A boomer showing the millennials how to do Social Distancing correctly. 

finally, just because I'm in an odd mood I thought I'd post some photos I love from (above) Rome, (just below) Paris-the Louvre, and one of my favorite Paris restaurants (second down). 

1994.

And a couple images of Belinda... from the early days.

Below. A photo I took in Half Priced Books with a Canonet QL17 when it was brand new..

 I hope everyone is doing well. I wanted to thank those who submitted Netflix selections. I made a list and I'm working through it.

I'm still waiting for those Leica SL prices to drop... just in case anyone from the east or west coast Leica stores happen to read the blog.

the current favorite camera of the day is........still the Sigma fp.

Have fun, keep the Purell handy and keep working the shutter of your camera.

Thinking about what lens Sigma should create just for me and my Sigma fp camera. And why on earth do I have two of the 45mm lenses?

The dynamic duo. Identical twins. 

I know there are a lot of people out there who don't understand how, in this day and age, a 45mm lens with a "slow" aperture of f2.8 and no built-in image stabilization can possibly cost $549. Who would buy it? and why? You can get a 50mm f1.4 lens from XXXXX and XXXXX for the same amount of money, etc. etc. 

When Sigma designed the 45mm f2.8 lens I'm not sure they had a giant market in mind. I'm pretty sure they were producing something that might appeal to certain photographers but those photographers would be a smaller intersection of the great mass of people who like to take pictures and people who love to buy gear. You need to like gear a bit to appreciate a well made lens but you also need to like making creative photos a lot to appreciate a lens that has a different character than all the other lenses in its focal length class. 

My first two experiences with lenses in the 40-45mm focal length range happened early on in my journey in photography. My first real camera (and one of the few from that era which I still have) was the Canonet QL17 which was a compact, rangefinder camera that came with its own fixed 40mm f1.7 lens. I used the camera heavily for the first few years of my infatuation with photography and it was my primary camera on a months long backpacking trip through Europe. The lens, when shot wide open and close to the subject would mimic the look you'd get with a long fast lens. The depth of field would be shallow and the subject well isolated. When used in combination with a good black and white film like Kodak's Tri-X the lens exemplified for me what it meant to create art with a camera. 

Paris. 1978. Canonet QL17

The combination of a focal length somewhere halfway between normal and 35mm seemed to be the ultimate all purpose chameleon; wide enough for nearly any street scene but still capable of making a nice and relatively non-distorted portrait. The focal length, through two years of constant use, imprinted itself on whatever part of my brain that determines the appreciation of one focal length over another. 

Relatively soon after my photographic initiation with the Canon rangefinder and its mystic lens I found myself in possession of a Leica camera called the CL. At the time it stood for compact Leica. Leica has dug up the name from their film camera graveyard and bestowed it on a newer digital camera but I think silliness like that is confusing and an affront to the older classic. 

The CL I owned came with one of the finest lenses I ever used. It was a 40mm Summicron f2.0. It was made and produced specifically for that camera. It was bright, sharp and utterly transparent (don't make me explain that...). The lens was made for the CL because the CL had a much shorter rangefinder base than the regular M cameras and so it was thought that the focusing inaccuracies made the 40mm, with it little bit extra depth of field, a better choice as a standard for that mini-system. It was also small and light. M users mostly avoided it because there wasn't a dedicated bright frame line in the finder for that focal length.

Canonet. Paris. 1978. 40mm.

B.Y. 1980. Leica CL, 40mm Summicron

I have beautiful photographs from the 40mm Summicron that were exceptionally easy to print. It's because the lens delineated all the tones so well and with such authority (again, don't ask me to explain).  I eventually got rid of the CL body because it was unreliable but held on to the lens until the end of the century. It was lost in the turmoil surrounding photography's journey to the dark side (digital). 

There were several other cameras that also featured really nice 40mm lenses; one that immediately comes to mind was the tiny Rollei 35S (which, now that I think of it might be considered as the predecessor of cameras like the Sigma fp = a small box with a decent f2.8 40mm Zeiss Sonar lens and one of the smallest 35mm film cameras of the day. Strictly zone focusing!). 

When Sigma came out with their new version of the slightly wider than 50mm "normal" lens I was initially hesitant and bought the L-mount 50mm f1.4 from Panasonic instead. While it's a magnificent, fast lens it's very, very clinical and very large and heavy. I more or less slid into the 45mm f2.8 because I'm lazy and the lens works so well as a walk around. But the more I've used it the more I've both appreciated it's "look" but also appreciated how well it is made and how convenient it is to use when you don't feel as though photography should make you sore, like a day at the gym.

I was on the fence about buying one until I read an interview with my favorite cinematic director of photography, Gordon Willis. He loved using the 40mm focal length as often as possible in his movie productions. One need only re-watch Manhattan to understand the power of that focal length. 

I was struck that he had a formula he used to make many scenes, it was his 40 / 40 rule. A 40mm lens used 40 inches up from the floor. The next day I went to my local camera store and bought my first copy of the lens. But this was well before I bought the Sigma fp camera. 

Initially I used the lens on the Lumix S1 and immediately liked the way it rendered faces. Not unsharp. Lots of detail and resolution but without the actinic sharpness that seems to go with current, high end optics. The lens is a little bit soft when used wide open and at the closest distances. One stop down at f4.0 and it's nicely sharp. By 5.6 it's got heaps and heaps of resolution but without too much of the acutance that makes images seem either sharper or too sharp. 

Once I got my Sigma fp camera two things happened: First, I've never wanted to take the 45mm Sigma off the front of that camera. It's as though some designer worked hard to make a combination which, when used together, creates wonderful images that are different than what I get from all other cameras. Second, it made me fall in love with the combination: the smallest full frame digital camera body available along with a lens that melds with the body to provide the perfect package -- from a handling point of view (with the accessory handgrip attached...). 

If we never get out from under the Novel Coronavirus we'll never again get to photograph commercially the way we were doing it in the pre-virus days. If we can't go back I'll quickly sell off all the stuff I've accumulated with the exception of the fp and the 45mm. And maybe I'll pick up a second fp just for luck. Two identical Sigma fp cameras and  matching 45mm lenses. Identical twins. 

But why two? Because, realistically, we'll get through this pandemic. At least most of us will. If Belinda and I are part of the lucky survivors there's so much pent up travel desire I can't think I'll ever want to go back to working for clients. And if we're traveling all over the place I don't want to stand in front of a beautiful subject and have a camera stop working. That happened to me before on a vacation in the 1980's and it wasn't fun. I want to have the assurance that I'll be able to go back to my hotel room and pull an identical camera out of the luggage, toss the same memory cards in it and be back out taking photographs immediately. It's like taking a long road trip. You probably wouldn't venture across the desert unless you had some extra drinking water in your car and a spare tire. Think of the second camera and lens as your spare tire. 

But, if I were to distill down all the gear, based on everything I've learned about photography since 1978, I would want one or two more lenses to include in the luggage as we wend our way around the world. 

The first would be a 75mm f2.8 that's about the size and design of the current 45mm lens. I don't need super speed but I'd love the same kind of design parameters when it comes to imaging. With a 24 megapixel sensor the 75mm would be long enough for most stuff since I could crop up to half the frame and still have good results. 

The second lens would be a similarly sized 21mm for those rare times when my back is up against the wall and there's still a little more I'd like in the frame. Plus, I like the eccentricity of the 21 versus the ubiquitous 20mm or even more cloying 24mm. And, you could make my 21mm an f4.0 or even f4.5 if you wanted to....as long as you kept it small and sharp. 

Ah. Canon. Why can't you make one of these as a digital camera?

It was absolutely perfect in its time. I'd buy two and never look back. 

Custom gaffer tape added by a younger Kirk....

So, why two lenses right now? Hmmm. Because it's a special lens with a limited market. Not that many people look beyond specs to character, and even fewer value the way a lens creates a look over impressions of high sharpness. If it's taken off the market because it doesn't sell I want to make sure I have an extra to use for years to come. Also, if the one lens never comes off the front of the Sigma fp then I certainly need the second one for all those times I'd like to use the lens on a Panasonic Lumix S1R....

Ian Fleming once wrote that worry is a price we pay for something which we may never receive. 

He also wrote, about James Bond's life: "It reads better than it lives." 

Perhaps a non sequitur but perhaps not.

Mike R. requested that I post my iPhone rig and I am complying with dispatch... Thank you for giving me a momentary feeling of purpose! 🤣

I see people taking photos and videos with their iPhones all the time and goodness knows I've tried to squeeze good stuff out of my telecommunications gear as well. The problem for me is that there's no good way to hold a naked phone. I always end up with my elbows in some weird position while my pinkies seem to stick out at awkward angles like a 1950's caricature of a proper Englishman having a cup of tea. As a result I spend way too much time thinking about how to hold the phone still and way too little time actually doing so. 

I bought a device from Manfrotto that attaches to my phone with spring loaded pressure and then allows me, via a tripod socket, to mount the assemblage on a tripod, or in this case, a handy gripping surface.  It's called, Manfrotto Universal Smartphone Clamp, Pro Version, and it set me back $20 USD. 

I was going to buy a handgrip of some sort but while lounging lackadaisically in front of my computer I happened to look around the office and spy not one, but two Leica ball heads. These were the original tripod heads for the fabulous Leica table top tripods and they are well built (did you expect anything less?) and it dawned on me that not only would one of these provide a dandy gripping surface but would also allow, via its bullhead, the ability to adjust the angle of the camera and it's mounting piece to  suit whatever need rears its creative head. You could use just about anything as a grip so long as it has a quarter 20 screw thread for attachment. 

The advantage of the Leica ball head is that you could put it on a monopod or a tripod if you were so inclined. But we've got a lot of tripod heads around that work just fine so I purposed the Leica head solely for handheld iPhone use. There is no red "Leica" logo dot on the head but there is a very lovely and discreet "Leitz" logo engraved on one part of the body of the tripod head so I guess if I need to impress someone I could ask then to put on their reading glasses and take a gander.

Here are a couple of shots of this heavy machinery in action. Don't try this without attending some sort of "best practices" workshop or spending hours on YouTube getting some expert advice on clever techniques.... I stabilize with my other hand but that's more habit than necessity. 

A darker and more "authentic" look at the rig in action. I was just about to hit the slow motion video recording option and call for the fog machine when I took this photo. Just out of the scene; six feet or more from my left, was the obligatory iPhone-tography super model practicing her pout and trying to decide just how much cleavage to show while pretending to embrace a rather large cactus plant.... while jutting out her derrière. 

I tried for a "viewer's perspective of this mission critical tool set but I was hampered by not having my usual entourage of photography attendants and hangers-on. My entourage. Because of social distancing I thought it easiest if I just shot this stuff myself. Tragically, a few of my compositions are a bit off. I will not be winning any PPofA Master Craftsman awards for this piece but I felt the time pressure to get the more vital information to Mike as quickly as possible (but after coffee/made at home/from a jar of instant). 

Seriously though, the handle is at its best when you are attempting to hold the camera steady for video clips. If you can lean your arm on something like a table or a railing it's even better. The Leica head works because it has a tall, thin body structure that seems made for medium sized hands like mine. 

The Manfrotto device depends on a spring to provide a grip and little friction pads to keep the phone from moving around. Since iPhones are very much a luxe product it's little wonder then that the discontinued Leitz ball head is the ONLY grip handle approved by Apple.....(as if). 

This shot is not an example of a way in which I would use the rig but is included to show you the products in their entirety. What a superb hand model. I should do that for a living instead. 

I'm just getting up to speed on the XR as a video tool. I need to plug in ear buds, complete with a microphone, and see how it is for narrator audio. I'd love to create small movies with the rig and a bit of audio stuff but if I have to attach the proverbial kitchen sink I've got other cameras that are just begging to be used. 

I normally don't take blog requests but MikeR has been a very cool reader for a good long while and I wanted to reward his patience with my patented manic depressive writing style. 

Hope this helps Mike. If you haven't tried the slo-mo on the phones it's pretty incredible. And you don't need to do it in 4K; 1080p is just fine.

Thanks! Fun stuff to play with as we shelter in place. Alternating between Xanax and red wine here. Alternate days. Depends on which day has a more depressing news cycle... (just kidding, self-medicating NOT recommended by VSL). 

Any Netflix movie or documentaries you guys can recommend? I'm running out of good programming and considering getting the Russian surplus TV shows to tide me over. Melodramas from the collective, etc.

I had a job today. It was fun. It was supervised by two doctors.

I think this is an enormous air conditioning tower. Someone is anticipating a level of global warming 

that is gigantic. Still under construction...

Life continues to be interesting. One of the medical practices I've worked with for decades asked me to make a portrait of a new partner/associate. This is something we do a dozen or so times a year. The practice is growing quickly and they keep adding radiologists at a rapid clip. We do the portraits by appointment in my little West Austin studio but this was the first session I've done  since the virus crisis began here, a couple of weeks ago. 

I asked for some guidance from several of my physician friends about sanitizing my space and putting protocols in place that would ensure that no on would come into contact with any virulent pathogens. No viruses. No weird bugs. I cleaned all the flat surfaces with Chlorox wipes, mopped floors with strong detergents and carefully wiped down the photo gear with isopropyl alcohol as per "Dr. Roger" at LensRentals.com.

I positioned hand sanitizer bottles at our entry way and even called my subject to see if she wanted me to wear a face mask (we are not hoarding masks, I had a small pack left over from an eye surgery shoot I wrote about last year...). Not necessary. We're actually into our 10th day of more or less total social distancing around here. 

It felt odd not to shake hands when the two doctors (also husband and wife) came into the studio but that's our new normal. I had the studio lighting totally set up and measured via an accurate incident light meter. The camera was about eight feet from the posing stool I normally use for portraits and I used the 70-200mm f4.0 S Pro lens on an S1 camera to make the photographs. Only one of the doctors needed a portrait so we went through the process quickly but in no great hurry. They were surprised how soon the session was over and also asked to see a few of the shots on the rear screen of the camera. Success.

We all did a good job maintaining good distancing and after they left I made sure to wipe down any surfaces they may have touched. But --- they were pros and they know the no contamination drill a lot better than me. After my cleaning routine I sat down at my desk to edit out the blinks and grimaces, convert the raw files to really nice looking Jpegs, and put the images up on Smugmug.com in a private gallery. I continue to streamline the process with every session so it all just goes faster and faster. Soon it will seem completely transparent and instantaneously; I wonder how I will be able to justify my fees then....?

I shopped today. Groceries only. It would seem wrong to bop up to Precision Camera just for a quick look around; especially since there is nothing photographic I really need to buy right now. 

My first leg was to Whole Foods. I wanted to buy a really good steak. A better one than I could get at the other local chains. Belinda also asked me to check and see if they had milk. I was expecting the experience at the store to be time consuming and would require waiting in a long line to get in. I thought they'd be limiting store traffic in that way. But no. There was ample surface parking and the store wasn't at all crowded at 2:30 pm when I walked in. People were shopping but there was no sign of frantic panic and no carts overflowing with milk cartons or cleaning products. 

The only aisle that was picked over and naked was the one for toilet paper and paper towels. And, of course, there was no hand sanitizer to be found. But the meat counter was well and fully staffed and the inventory of prime cuts was as burgeoning as ever. The same story in the cold cases, for milk. I bought two half gallon jugs of organic whole milk ($3.99 each) and moved on to vegetables. 

Today organic asparagus was on sale for Prime Members for $2.99 per ample bunch. I bought some but when I got home Belinda reminded me that Ben isn't a big asparagus fan and the reason for the shopping trip was to stock up for our weekly family dinner with the kid. That's okay --- I think I have some Brussel sprouts hoarded away for just such an emergency.

My next stop was the neighborhood Trader Joe's store. There was a line there... but it had about 12 people in it and moved rapidly. I was inside and shopping in about three minutes. I bought a bottle of red wine and two small, spray bottles of hand sanitizer. In and out in five minutes or less. 

Embracing the iPhone. I went for a walk in downtown yesterday. It's still totally legal here as long as you keep to yourself. The complication was a steady rain. I know that all the cameras I've bought in the last year are supposed to be weather proof or weather resistant but I still have a perhaps unreasonable fear of walking around with a soaking $3600 camera body attached to a $2200 water covered lens. And the last time I went out walking nobody seemed to like the photos I came back with anyway. 

"The Hell with it!" I said to myself, I stuck my iPhone XR in the pocket of my rain jacket, tossed the Sigma fp onto the floor board of the car, covered it with an old, black baseball cap and went off to look for my little corner of America.

I've come to like shooting with my iPhone now. I fixed the stuff I didn't like about it. It was awkward to hold but I bought a Manfrotto phone holder that allows one to attach the phone to a tripod or other quarter inch mount tool. I chose a Leica table top tripod bullhead as a grip for the phone and its attaching mechanism. Now I like the way I can old the phone and steady it in my hands. The grip is nice but I still, out of habit, stabilized with my other hand on the right edge of the phone. 

The most compelling feature of the phone is the slo-motion video. You can do 240 fps or 120 fps. That's 4X slow mo from the 120, if you are basing it on a 30 fps finished file. But here's the weird thing! It looks really, really good. I was just playing around with it but it's fun to point the camera at your feet and shoot as you walk. It looks hilarious when your motion is slowed down by a factor of four. Really fun. 

I've also found that a really steady grip when shooting iPhone stills is paramount to getting really nice files. So I think I've mastered those parts too. Shooting with the XR is so different than shooting with a conventional camera in that every shot is wide and every shot has pretty much everything in sharp focus. It's something you have to get used to after spending months shooting everything with a full frame camera and mostly fast, traditional lenses. Amplify that when you take into consideration that I mostly shoot with 45mm and longer lenses...

The final thing I've learned is that Airdropping images between the phone and the desktop computer kills some of the image quality of the photos. I think Airdrop must do some compression to the files... I tend to hook the phone up to a USB cable and do a manual download. Done that way the files look great. All the files in today's blog were done with my phone. I thought I'd give my brain a break from the Sigma fp camera; even though it's as close to perfect as almost any camera can be. Well, at least for snapshot-y things and art-sy things. 

The walk itself was a bit depressing. There's no one on the streets except the homeless. They seem especially lost these days since their primary source of income = other people = have almost completely dried up. Downtown is empty. Everything is closed. The hotels looked almost forlorn. One or two shops, like Jo's, were trying the "carry out" only thing but they seem to have thrown in the towel for now two as there was no one there and the lights were off at 3 p.m. 

When the number of people on the streets drops below a certain count the magic of the street vanishes completely. The added insult is the boarding up of all the store fronts of the bars and restaurants in the downtown district. You can't even enjoy some of the historic buildings' interesting facades and shop fronts.

I think I'll give up on photographing the downtown area until the people are able to come back. It's too sad. Too depressing. Nothing like this has happened in Austin since I got here in 1974. It's like someone just suddenly sucked the life out of a city. The only salve is my belief that we're just in a state of social suspended animation and that soon the bars, theaters and restaurants will be back and thriving. At least I hope that happens. It was be sad if this was it. The end. The downfall of civilization. 

Boarding up an historical district. A safety precaution against looting and squatting?

The one bright side is hearing about big companies stepping up during the pandemic. Target just increased worker salaries by  at least $2 per hour. So did Whole Foods. Starbucks closed all but their drive up locations but announced that every worker would be fully paid through the next 30 days (at least) and would keep getting health care benefits, including mental health support. Even if they chose not to come in during those 30 days. 

Several CEOs are bargaining for federal loans and offering to forgo their pay for the year. 

With the walks downtown gone, the theater gone, swimming anywhere cancelled, and all the coffee shops gone my universe seems to be getting smaller and smaller. Bleaker and bleaker. But I guess it feels that way for a lot of people. 

And since we're all watching our budgets; either for our own survival or to have enough to donate wisely, while still meeting our obligations, the one thing I've stopped buying is photography gear. Really, what's the point of buying ever newer toys if all the things and places you wanted to photographed are now off limits?

When (if?) everything comes roaring back I'm throwing caution to the wind and embracing travel and adventure to the max. Time all of a sudden seems so short and there's so much left to see and do. 

The house feels big and empty without Studio Dog. Maybe it's time to try something completely different. But I couldn't plan a worst time to launch something new. Right?  Right?

As my wealth managers says, "Stay the course and keep with the game plan. You'll come through this (the crisis) unscathed." Maybe so but it's not quite what I had planned for...