I don't show as many portraits of men. I'll try harder. This is from the very early years. Back when I was in my "Richard Avedon-white background" phase.

 Back in 1978, when I was just getting started in photography, I lived and did portraits in an ancient building on East Seventh St. in Austin, Texas that used to be "The California Hotel." It was a flop house back in the 1960s and was shut down sometime near the end of that decade after there was a double homicide on the second floor. Peter, who was a museum curator, and Lou, who was an impresario/entrepreneur/eccentric, found the shuttered building and got a long lease. With a lot of work they made it into a downtown live/work commune for artists and musicians. 

Some tenants had real jobs. My neighbor across the hall was an art director for Texas Monthly Magazine. Peter was a curator at a wonderful art museum. Mr. Sexton was a musician. Those people rented their spaces as studio; they had houses or apartments to go home to.  I made photographs during the day and worked at a short order/fry cook in the late night hours and on weekends. The hotel was my base camp.

My space had amazingly high ceilings but it was just one big room. The two things it lacked were a telephone and air conditioning or heating. But man, it was cheap. We had a shared phone down the hall.  We had a commercial kitchen downstairs, and also a huge gallery space. I had my first show of sixty 16x20 inch black and white prints there. All portraits. That show effectively launched my journey as a picture maker/taker. 

We were all mostly artists/hippies back then. I rode a moped to work. It had a sturdy milk crate bungee'd to the back rack and I used to haul my camera gear around on it. We all wore sandals. We bathed in an outdoor shower in the courtyard. It felt like we were living in a movie and it was one of those fun, "Coming of Age" light-hearted comedies; for the most part. 

Any way, back then I would ask anyone I thought was at least somewhat interesting to come by and have their portrait made. They'd let me shoot exactly the way I wanted to and in exchange I'd make them a nice, fiber based print.

While trying to get my fledgling career off the ground I was working as a cook, in odd shifts, at a mid-city diner called, Kerbey Lane Café. If you guessed that the owners named it that because it was on Kerbey Lane you'd be right. It was one of Austin's first all night, comfort food + beer and wine, restaurants in what was then a sleepy, little college town. Gingerbread pancakes or migas anyone?

The guy with the cat, above, was Craig. He was one of the owners of Kerbey Lane Café and a really great guy. He'd hop into the kitchen and help us cook during rushes. He taught me how to flip over easy eggs in a pan without the use of a spatula. I asked him to come by the studio for a portrait and he brought his cat. 

I was pretty much broke at the time but I'd managed to buy my first "real" camera. It was an ancient, highly used, Mamiya C220; a twin lens camera with interchangeable lenses. I had two lenses for the camera. One was a 135mm which I used all the time for portraits. The other was the stock 80mm which I used for group shots. My "arsenal" of lights back then consisted of a Vivitar 283 which was a powerful but barebones shoe mount, electronic flash. If I could afford double "A" batteries then we had light. When the batteries died the shoot was over. No lithiums or NiMh rechargeable batteries back then. We did have NiCads but they were so much crap. 

What I did have access to though was the Ark Cooperative Darkroom. That's where I made most of my prints. I got pretty good at souping film in D76 as well. I always hated the drudgery of making contact sheets.

It was very much a hand-to-mouth existence back then but I wouldn't have traded it for the world. And we thought it was grand. Yuppies had not been invented yet and eccentricities were seen as a major plus. How else would I have gotten my start?

I guess it was an Austin thing...

Vegetable seller in Venice. Empty streets. Cloudy skies.

 My iPhone XR is an unusual copy stand camera. One side or the other of the image I'm shooting is always "toned" or darker in the corners. It's because I'm lazy about stuff like this and not willing to do much more than lay a print down and shoot with the light coming through my windows. 

I see images on the blog as illustrations of something also written down, like notes, not as "Art" in a standalone gallery. 

This image was taken 30 or so years ago and what I wanted to draw attention to is the wonderful texturing of the vegetables. The image started life as a black and white snapshot, on Tri-X, in an old Leica CL with the little 40mm Summicron on it. I printed it on a matte surface paper (probably Kodak's Ektalure G) in my studio's darkroom; back when I had the studio on San Marcos St. in east Austin. 

I liked photography life better when shots could be taken that were casual and informative but didn't suffer under the expectations of perfection. Just notes between friends, not a hoary manifesto used to beat each other over the head. Sometimes I didn't even care if a photo was totally in focus as long as the content evoked memories for me that I enjoyed. 

I know it's strange now to contemplate Venice, Italy (sans Covid) without pressing crowds, noise, litter and high prices but back when I first visited the city it was so inexpensive that we opted to stay for ten days and roam around. We were traveling in late October and the weather was cool, the skies gray. Our president at the time had just bombed Libya which scared USA tourists from traveling outside the borders at all. Which, of course, meant for us lower hotel rates, easier access to good restaurants and streets no more crowded than the ones at home. 

What a wonderful time to travel.

No Cheat Street Photography. Tell me again why it's crucial to have dual pixel, phase detection, auto focus in order to get close candid images of people...

I get that PD-AF means a surer chance at getting stuff in focus. Just as evaluative metering and a plethora of automatic exposure modes ensures (maybe) better exposed images. But I find people tend to use their lack of access to the absolutely latest tools as a dodge to explain away their fumbled photographic results. 

I thought about this today as I opened up a few boxes of prints done years ago and rifled through them. All of the images here were taken with a medium format camera. The cameras I used (mostly a Hasselblad 500 C/M) were absolutely manual in every regard. Lenses were focused by turning a big ring. By hand!

Exposures were set by adjusting both the shutter speeds and apertures individually. And by hand. And the logic behind getting the right exposure setting came either from experience or referencing a handheld meter. Which was/is also totally manual. But somehow I was able to walk into strangers' worlds and make photographs that I found interesting. And most of them printed up well. 

I conjecture that we've made photography so easy that we don't take it very seriously even when we say we do. The manual methods required a modicum of thought, planning and an allocation of resources; you could only comfortably bring along a limited amount of film. No pray and spray with a 12 exposure roll....

I guess we'll relegate all this to the idea that it was another time and everything has changed. But after looking through a fat box with hundreds of prints I feel compelled to set my cameras to manual exposure, turn off the AF and take a bit more time before maniacally pushing the shutter button over and over again. 

Who knows, I might actually get good enough to compete with myself from 25 years ago... (ellipses mandated by subject matter!). 

 

Remembering early inkjet printers. Another trip in the time machine.

Ben was a well documented kid. We have lots and lots of images to choose from. Literally yards and yards of albums and file drawers full of negatives. Opening up a flat file is like opening up a treasure chest. 

When inkjet printers first hit the market in full force we were still doing a lot of printing. And by "we" I mean the collective we. I think photographers huddled together and spoke about printer technology in the mid-1990s far more often and intensely than they did about cameras or lenses. 

Like many photo nerds I had several printers including one Epson 1280 that I had converted to using only gray and black inks. For every print I got that I liked I got five or ten that were horribly flawed. When I moved to the Epson 4000 the prints looked better but clogging arrived with a vengeance. 

I don't print much anymore because there's really no place to show and nobody asking for them. I keep a big printer near the desk and bang off the random print for myself but really, the printer mostly gets used for very mundane things like printing out invoices. But even there it's a rare event as nearly every client is happier to get PDFs. 

I loved the photo of Ben above and made prints on various paper stocks. The one I like best came from a dye sub printer. Probably a Fuji. I found a copy today and put it on my "new" copy stand/communications device and fired off a frame. 

Funny to stumble across images from 20+ years ago and to remember how simple things were back then: family, work, love, sleep and food. Nothing else to really worry about. How charming!

Portrait of a painter. Circa 1979. In the painting studios at the Fine Arts College. University of Texas at Austin.

I came across a box of prints today and it was like firing up a time machine. I find that I have deluded myself all these years with the mistaken belief that better and better cameras and lenses were somehow vital to realizing a vision of some sort. How woefully misguided I have been. 

This image was shot with an ancient SLR camera; the Canon TX. It was a totally manual camera in every regard. The film is, no doubt, Kodak's Tri-X. I'm sure because I was so underfunded in those days that I could only afford film that I bought in bulk rolls and spooled into 35mm cartridges myself. 

The lens was a well used 85mm f1.8 Canon FD. I bought it from a photographer friend who needed to sell it in order to pay his tuition.

I made the original print in the Ark Co-op Darkroom on some sort of wonderful double weight paper and here we are 40+ years later and the processing is still holding up well; no yellowing beyond the original tone of the paper.

The camera doesn't matter nearly as much as being completely infatuated with the subject. Which continues to this minute. 

If you can't make good images it's probably not about the quality of your gear but perhaps you are just aiming the equipment at the wrong subject.

Looking through boxes of old prints is a nice way to spend a cold, short, rainy day. Ah, we were so young and thin in those days. 

How many here use Halide Mark II with your phones? I installed today and I'm heading out to play with it. FirstLight versus Halide. Should be interesting.

Just a traditional camera and lens. Sunset.
 

Many are asking why Sigma would bring to market a 65mm lens. Why would they not?

shot from the Pfluger Pedestrian Bridge with a GH5 and the Sigma Contemporary 56mm f1.4.

If you've looked through the images I generally post here and on Instagram you'll know that my taste skews, emphatically, toward focal lengths that have an angle of view of a 50mm lens on a full frame (24x36mm) camera, or longer. With the exception of images from crazy masters/artists like William Klein I have little to no patience for photographs shot with wider angle lenses that are generally jammed packed with tiny details. Photos that drag your eyes all over the place, desperately trying to decipher what the hell the photographer had in mind when he shot the image. Is there a main subject I should be looking for? Well, where is it? It's almost as if wide angle fans were indoctrinated by whoever created "Where's Waldo?" and have been trying to mystify their audiences ever since. 

I've been cruising around the web today, while trying to take it easy, and I'm a bit distressed at all the blogs and vlogs that are, themselves, mystified that Sigma would have the audacity to introduce a 65mm lens. The implication being that we are in dire need of yet another 35mm or 28 mm instead? Geez, why not end your wide angle suffering (or increase your visual torture of others) by just getting a 12mm lens and cropping from time to time. With something that wide you could give up taking responsibility for rational composition altogether and just pick and chose your frame well after the fact. You could change your mind and re-crop every time you look at whatever collage of subject matters you've thrown together in a photograph. Who would care?

Real photographers are able to make up their minds at the time of exposure as to what needs to be included and what's best left out. They know that images are so much more enjoyable when there's a subject to the work instead of a collection of endless datum. In fact, it's almost a responsibility.

Most of the people talking down Sigma's new 65mm f2.0 lens are busy mentioning how, for them, the universe revolves around the 35mm lens; a focal length I regard with no small amount of disdain. If the world really needed one more iteration of the 35mm lens you wouldn't know it from looking through the nearly endless selection of 35mm lenses at B&H, Amazon and Adorama. The photo world is clogged up with that ubiquitous and boring focal range. That, and the 28mm are among the most over-rated focal length choices in the world. Sure, I get that you might be working in a small space and can't back up. I get that use. But if you are out in the wide world and that's the one you're still choosing to use ---- well, I just don't get it. 

With the announcement of the 65mm from Sigma there are now, I think, just two products in that focal length for full frame cameras. Sure, you can buy a zoom lens and pick the exact focal length you want but that's an argument you could use about any focal length between 24 and 200 these days. What you are really getting, with the 65mm, is a 50mm lens with just a bit more discretion and selective integrity. It's a focal length that says, "Let's look at the main course." instead of a focal length that says, "f8 and be there. Hail Mary! Hold it up high and we'll get the whole park in the frame!!!" 

And according to reviewers Sigma has made a single focal length lens product that should outperform even the best zoom lenses at that particular focal length while adding some speed to the mix.

As I understand it (with no confirmation or exact data) Sigma is following Apple's lead. You know about the Apple phones, right? The most popular enthusiasts' camera in the world. Their big flagship model has a new "telephoto" choice among the three lenses it offers. The "long" one is a 65mm equivalent. I predict that it's just a matter of time, now that phone users can easily compare between Wider, wide and best that the entire market will train themselves to understand better and to appreciate the longer focal length. I'm sure Sigma wanted to be first in line, behind Apple, with a product for the more advanced and motivated iPhone users who will also buy and use dedicated still and video cameras. And who will want to emulate the choices offered by their phones.

Certainly I am writing this partially tongue-in-cheek (or what's left of it...) but the gist of my thinking is this: most people put a 28mm or 35mm lens on their camera and go out looking for pix with the mindset that they have equipped themselves with a Swiss Army Knife of optical options. They convince themselves that they'll not only be able to work in tighter spaces, or show more background, but that they will also be able to shoot images with their super high resolution cameras and then march back into their digital offices and crop the resulting photographs into a wonderfully compelling, and much more aggressively framed composition. One in which a prominent or "main" subject will stand out from the incessant clutter. But the sad reality is that so few take the time and energy to follow through on the crop. Perhaps the marketing by Leica of the Q2 is to blame. 

Leica makes a reasonable (but highly flawed) case for post-shot cropping made possible and available because of the quality of their fixed 28mm lens and the very high resolution their 47.5 megapixel sensor. But have I seen any samples in which the images have actually been cropped? Not so much. It's one step too far for most people. What would HCB think of all this gratuitous cropping?

I like 50mm lenses but I like longer lenses even better. The 65 is a nice spot between too much and too little in a frame. It's a focal length that allows one to back up a bit and make a nice headshot without too much distortion. It's long enough to come close to a subject and make it stand out. And at f2.0 and the close focusing distances it seems perfect for tight still life shots and images of food. 

For years Leica has produced a 60mm macro lens. So has Nikon. Sigma produced a very popular 70mm macro as well. Nearly every camera maker has a 24-70mm lens and no one ever questions those makers about their choice of longer focal length lenses. With the macros most careful workers understand why that focal length is a great overall compromise for so many types of photography. 

The zooms are teaching tools. People buy them to have a "full range" of options. Newbies fire away at 24mms until the people they want to photograph, horrified by their distorted faces and awkwardly enlarged bodies run screaming from the room upon the hapless photographer's approach. Eventually, hopefully, the photographer learns to experiment first with the moderation of 35-50mm until, at some point in their visual education they come to the realization that the real magic generally happens once you go longer than 50mm. 

Since everyone already makes a 35mm and a 28mm (and dozens of variants as well) and they are available in flavors from f1.2 to f2.8 there is no reason for Sigma not to offer a rarer and more desirable option for a focal length. They need only put it on the market and wait for people to come around. Nice to see some initiative in the midst of a cruel and shrinking market. 

Yes, I pre-ordered a Sigma 65mm for the L-mount system from my friends at the local camera store today. 

You can argue for the lesser focal lengths or just ignore all this...it might be the extra strength Tylenol talking.

OT: Back in the saddle. But not galloping yet. Trying to follow doctor's orders.

The post op mug shot. I would smile but I don't want to disturb the stitches...

A confession: I have the most severe medical procedure phobia of anyone I know. At times even getting a flu shot will cause me to feel woozy and faint and needing to be horizontal.Anticipation of a blood test is fuel for a pre-week of anxiety and worst case scenario thinking. So when my dermatologist told me I needed to have a squamous cancer growth removed from my face via surgery I went (metaphorically) looking for a bottle of Xanax. The next big mistake I made was watching a video about the procedure. It was supposed to be preparatory education but instead it was like being alone, in a house hundreds of miles away from civilization, late at night during a thunderstorm and watching the "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" in a double feature with "Rosemary's Baby." Oh sure, toss in some footage from the original "Alien" movie for good measure. And it would all be happening to me which made it all even more scary.

I packed a small bag of essentials to take with me for the "Mohs" surgery. This is a micro-surgical procedure in which the surgeon begins by carving out a small margin of  Kirk material surrounding and including any cancerous growth. They put the carved out tissue under a microscope, examine the edges/margins to see if there is any evidence of cancer in the outlying areas. If there is none they cauterize the area and then sew you up with two layers of stitches. If there is cancerous growth out to the margins they go back and make a wider cut. This continues until they get to a zone where the margins are all negative for cancer. The goal is to remove as little skin and sub layer as possible while getting all the suspect tissue. 

The procedure starts with Lidocaine injections in and around the area that will be removed. That part scared me the most. I hate injections. Just hate them. 

After a quick, five minute slicing and removal of tissue you have to sit, with a bandage on your wound while someone checks margins of the extracted epithelial tissue with the microscope. This took a half hour but fortunately my kind and brilliant spouse had picked up the latest Ian Rankin novel from the local library and packed it into my "go" bag earlier in the day. I pounded through the first 60 pages and it certainly took my mind off the whole ordeal. Go Literature!

The stitching up process is emotionally uncomfortable because you can feel the tugging and pulling of the sutures. But physically the whole area was deadened so there was no real pain. The pain came minutes later when the surgeon confirmed that swimming, and indeed any exertion that raises the heart rate over say, 90 bpm, was off limits for the next 7 days. Especially swimming hard and fast. Thank God I got 3300 yards in that morning.

So, the results in the margins were negative in the very first go. That was great news. We caught this early. Score one for hypochondria. I thought the doctor was incredibly good but that may be because all three of his kids are swimmers at a highly competitive program here in Austin. Seriously though, I trusted my surgeon because he was highly recommended by my regular dermatologist and I trust my dermatologist because he was the prime recommendation from my general practitioner. And I trust my G.P. because he's proven himself to me over the last 30 years. It all counts. Feeling confident in one's care providers eases much of the psychological burdens when you face any medical situation. I feel sorry for those who cannot have that kind of continuity of care. 

I was ushered into the clinic at 1:15 and I was in my car and heading home by 4:00 pm. I thought of dropping by Precision Camera on my way home and buying a little something to reward myself for my outrageous bravery but I feared the newly reinvigorated rush hour traffic just ahead. There so much new stuff for L mount users about to hit the market that perhaps it's best, in the moment, to keep some powder dry. 

My left cheek will never be the same. But I survived the ordeal and lived to write about it. Thanks for the nice e-mails, texts, etc. All most appreciated.

Now, off to pre-order that Sigma 65mm f2.0 for the L mount and to find a nice couch on which to perch and finish off that Ian Rankin novel. 

More to follow...

Thanksgiving Prosecco. Bring your camera to the table.

Panasonic GH5 and the Sigma 56mm f1.4. 

Bokeh-Masters for m4:3.

 

Heading in for a little facial surgery tomorrow. Part of a witness protection program? Vanity inspired plastic surgery? Naw, just a bit of cancer remediation. Wish me luck!

In the meantime, is anyone out there using the Leica SL2? I'd love to read what you think about it if you are. I've been bouncing back and forth for months about whether or not to "invest" in one. I may be too fickle to make the "one camera forever" thing work. But you never know...

Write me in the comments if you have experience. If you want to write a guest column about your experiences we can certainly entertain that. But you have to be a real, hands on user and not just a Leica hater with an axe to grind. There are other sites for that.

A short review of the Sigma Contemporary 56mm f1.4 lens for m4:3 cameras. And another installment of photos from last evening's walk.

Sigma is currently on a roll and putting out some really great lenses; especially for L-mount and m4:3 mount cameras. I recently bought the 85mm f1.4 DG DN Art lens for full frame L mount and found it just as good, optically, as their original 5 pound 85mm 1.4. You remember that big, hulking lens ---- the one that made Zeiss Otus 85mm owners weep openly at the thought that they could have three copies of a better lens for the price they paid for their manual focusing one... 

The 85mm I replaced the earlier 85mm with is not an outlier when it comes to lens performance from Sigma's art series. I also own the 20mm f1.4, and the 35mm f1.4 and find both of those lenses to be an unusual combination: high optical performance and yet priced low enough to be accessible to most users.

But this year my experiences with their Contemporary 45mm f2.8 led me to look at more lenses than just the Art lens series lenses for full frame. In the early part of the year I picked up the 16mm f1.4 DG DN Contemporary series lens and was quite impressed with its performance, even wide open, when used on various m4:3 cameras. A month ago I was in my favorite camera store when I spied a lens I'd read about but never used. It's the 56mm f1.4 DG DN which is available in either m4:3 mount or e-mount. I only covers up to an APS-C sensor so it's not for full frame camera owners but I guess you could use one on any of the Sony A7 series cameras in the "crop" mode. 

I asked the salesperson if I could see the lens on a camera body and he stuck one on a GH5 and handed it over. After I cleaned the fingerprints off the demo GH5 and set the diopter correctly (for me) I walked around the store focusing on stuff to see how fast the AF is and also shooting frame after frame so I could evaluate the sharpness wide open. 

The view through the finder was impressive. Bright and snappy is a good way to describe the performance. 

The lens is rather small; about the size of a "nifty-fifty" from the days when both Nikon and Canon made reasonably sized normal lenses. That makes sense since the lens is basically the same focal length. It's faster than the economy normals but it doesn't have to cover the full 35mm frame so it doesn't need to be much bigger. 

If you use this lens on an APS-C Sony it will give you a full frame angle of view equal to an 84mm lens. If you use it on a m4:3 camera it will give you a full frame angle of view equal to about 112mm. Unlike the barebones f1.8 normals this lens is an f1.4 and uses both a super low dispersion element and a couple of aspherical elements. The lens design is more complex, with 10 elements in 6 groups. The aperture uses 9 blades for better out of focus rendering and the filter diameter is a nice and calm 55mm. 

Sigma has done a wonderful job with this lens. Many times you'll buy a fast, f1.4 lens and not be able to use it (convincingly) until you stop it down a stop or two. Many fast normal lenses are okay in the center of the image area but fall apart on the edges and in the corners when you use them at f1.4. You kinda wonder why you bothered to pay for the two extra stops if you can't get the shots you want without having to stop down to f2.8. The 56mm repudiates that trend. It's very sharp in the center at the widest aperture and more than sharp enough on the peripheries. And the lens has "bite." 

To evaluate its resistance to flare be sure to look at fourth and sixth images below. Both have direct, hard lights shining directly into the frame and both images were taken with the lens at or near full aperture. You'll see very little flaring and no weird rays or artifacts. In this regard the 56mm performs better than lenses I've owned which cost three or four times as much. 

In terms of size and weight balance (the unit weighs right around one pound) this lens is a perfect match for a camera like the GH5 or G9. It's also a perfect match for those cameras when it comes to focusing. Even in dark areas and weirdly lit scene the S-AF was quick to lock on, didn't hunt and was absolutely accurate. 

If you are mostly in love with wider angle lenses we'll understand if the longer focal length on m4:3 isn't  your cup of tea but if you really like doing portraits and wish you could have more control over depth of field when shooting in m4:3 then this lens is a worthy contender. It's usually priced at $479 but every one in the camera industry has most of their stuff on sale right now so I'm seeing consistent pricing here in the USA of around $429. I wish it was $100 but then I also wish I had a V-12 engine in my Subaru Forester and I also wish that V-12 would get 40-50 miles per gallon driving around town.

It was refreshing to walk around downtown at dusk and into the "dark blue" hour. I let the camera roam around the ISO settings by putting it in Auto ISO and setting the ceiling at 3200. This was a nice opportunity to use the lens at its widest apertures without having to resort to neutral density filters or super high, electronic shutter speeds. 

Why have this lens for the GH5 when I also have the 85mm Art lens and a 90mm Leica lens for the full frame, S1 system? Well, the way I see it, the big stuff is for work and the small stuff is for play and personal work. It's okay to have both. Multiple systems come in handy for lots of stuff. But I have to say that the 110mm focal length is quickly becoming one of my favorites for quick, tight shots and art in available darkness.

Note the lack of flare from the oncoming headlights.

Focuses down to about a foot and a half. Not bad considering the angle of view.

Note the lack of flare from the spotlight over the mannequin's right shoulder.

The Seaholm development, built around the bones of a retired power plant, lights up the evaporator stacks for the holidays. It's a fun look.
 

Is the GH5 only suitable for photography in bright light? Let's take one for a walk and find out.

Micro Four Thirds cameras get a bad rap. Everyone acts like the minute the sun goes down the camera's ability to handle low light turns to mush. "Noise the size of golf balls!" I know that's not true but every once in a while I have to see (again) for myself. 

I was tired of re-ordering my studio yesterday. The sun was about to set. The temperatures started dropping towards the 40s. I picked up the Panasonic GH5 from the top of my desk and checked to make sure it had: a charged battery, a useful lens ( the Sigma Contemporary 56mm f1.4) and a memory card. Then I hopped in the car and headed over to the theater to park, walk across the pedestrian bridge, and visit downtown as night fell. There was an hour and a half available before dinner time. 

While it's the same basic route I usually follow it's amazing how different everything looks when the light outside drops and the lights inside come up. 

The GH5 has very good image stabilization and I was able to handhold all my shots in a low range of shutter speeds. Mostly between 1/8th second and 1/60th of a second. Of course if stuff was moving during the exposures all bets were off. I set the camera to Auto ISO and set the top of the range to 3200. I shot raw and Jpeg. All of these are from the raw files. 

 I think the GH5 is trouble free right up past ISO 800 and very useable for photography right up to ISO 3200 as long as you are willing to get the exposures just right. If you like to underexpose and bring up your shadows in post (which I admit I do like to do) then you might want to cap the range at 1250 or 1600. 

I shot most of the images with the lens set either wide open or one stop down at f2.0. 

It was nice to be in cold air. It feels so different from my baked in impression of the city as being in a perpetual heat wave... 

Come on Tuck. That light's not going to light itself. Well, actually it did. Buying more lights is NOT crazy.

 It's funny to me when I look around the studio and notice how few electronic flashes of any type still live here, and at the same time how plentiful LED lights have become. Flash used to be the "work horse" of any photographic studio and, after cameras and lenses, it's where most commercial photographers tossed their money. But then 2010 came along and changed everything. 2010 was the year mirrorless cameras really started showing up on people's radar but it was also the year when the market started to deliver an accelerating deluge of LED products of all stripes, sizes and prices. 

One photographer even was commissioned to write a book about LED photography for photographers, a little more than ten years ago. It was published in early 2012. You can learn more about that book here: 

https://www.amazon.com/LED-Lighting-Professional-Techniques-Photographers-ebook/dp/B008Q0Q8CA/ref=sr_1_3?dchild=1&keywords=LED+lighting+for+professional+photographers&qid=1606759468&s=books&sr=1-3

I'm not suggesting that you run out and buy a copy because everything has changed in the markets and the information space in the ensuing almost nine years. Three or four lifetimes in LED world. Yes, everything has evolved.

At any rate LEDs have become pervasive in the imaging world. On movie sets. For TV production. In the equipment lists of every videographer. And in the studios and equipment cases of an ever growing number of photographers. Even the ones who don't make videos.

Early on there was a demarcation between lights with great color and lights that were cheap. That boundary has pretty much vanished and now we're concentrating more on power output and features. Almost every light being pressed into professional service has a CRI (color rendering index) or 95 or better and does a great job of hitting their color temperature targets. Earlier lights depended on a panel implementation because the lights were made powerful enough for work by using hundreds or thousands of smallish bulbs spread across the panels. 

Panels work fine and I have four Lightstorm panels that do a nice job ---- except a panel has a big spread and it's difficult to get hard edge effects. Also, if you want to use good modifiers you'll probably need a two light stand set up. One stand for the light and a second one for the modifier. 

COB, or chip on a board, LED lights started to become affordable about five years ago and were made insanely popular by the Aputure 120D light which used a 1.5 by 1.5 inch COB LED and featured a Bowen's mount. Even at over $650 it sold briskly and there's now an "improved" model.  The LED/COB tech basically took the spot where flash tubes used to sit on lights and allowed for the use of the same modifiers and reflectors that most people were already using on their various flashes. 

I'd been buying more expensive lights from Aputure until I found the Godox SL60W which is a no frills COB light, rated at 60 watts, is daylight balanced and uses Bowens accessories. It's also really cheap at around $130. I wrote about these lights a while back and I like them so much I bought three. I use them all the time. Literally, every day. If not for work then for lighting up stuff around the compound.

The three SL60W lights and the four Aputure Lightstorm panels were working for me until I did a job back in August for a bio-tech company, at their headquarters. I needed to light up a 5,000 square foot laboratory and I did it, just barely, and by the skin of my teeth. At that point, and anticipating more work from the company (which arrived last month), I decided I needed to bolster my LED collection with some more powerful lights. I came across some good reviews of some new Godox products by Vlogger, Gerald Undone. Here's one review that's on topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbBN_b7OGec 

I watched his take on a new generation of Godox COB models and assessed how his results applied to my needs. I don't need battery power or fully silent lights but I can be parsimonious so I decided to purchase the SL150Wii. It's an update from a previous model and provides a mode whereby you can work at a reduced power output but are able to turn off the cooling fan entirely. The light is sturdy, fan cooled and plugs into wall sockets and runs off AC. The light belts out a good deal of clean illumination and seems to fit in well, color-wise, with the rest of my LED inventory. 

The light comes with a faceted reflector that makes it very efficient at delivering a lot of lumens. There's a dial on the right side of the rear panel for power output and also a switch to go into a lower power/fan-less mode. On the left side there's a switch to enable special effects and a dial with which to choose them. Think: Lightning strikes and emergency flashers (albeit with only white light). The light also comes with a remote control which allows you to raise and lower the power levels of the light without having to access the rear panel. 

The light is rated at 5600K and does not have a sister model to provides multiple color temperature settings. 

A week after I received the light (which I ordered from and paid for at Amazon = no freebies! No sponsor!) I had my second multi-day engagement with the big bio-tech company. I used the new, big Godox mostly by bouncing it off the high, white ceilings to provide overall illumination in big rooms while filling in and accenting my subjects with the less powerful LED lights. It worked very well and we breezed through two days of shooting "What you light is what you see." stuff. Adjustments to the lights, made by an assistant in real time while I observe on a hand held monitor, was a great way to work, giving large amounts of control.

But, if one big light is good then two big lights is better. When I bought the first light it cost $349. This weekend I decided I might really want that second light so I headed back over to check on pricing and availability. They were on sale for $279. Having had nothing but great experiences with the first one I was happy to click "yes" to a second one. Especially at 25% off. 

The SL150W/ii is not a powerful enough light to offset the sun outside but it's a good balance of size, weight, price and power for indoor photography shoots, and just about any sort of video production. With two of them bouncing off high, white ceilings I feel like I've got more options to play with in large spaces. If I push them both through a couple layers of white diffusion, stretched across a six foot by six foot panel frame, then I've got some really beautiful lighting. 

While I wait for the second light to arrive I wanted to photograph my first SL150wii for this post and it was already set up on a C-stand with a white umbrella in front of it. I pulled a 4x4 foot piece of foamcore and held it at the back of the product and just out of frame and took a few shots with a tripod mounted Sigma fp. In effect, the light actually did light itself. All of the light on the product camera from the product. Pretty cool. Very easy. 

I'm not suggesting you rush out and buy an SL150Wii. I just wanted to share why I like the light and why I wanted a second one. Forward, into a mostly flash-less future.

New murals spring up on Lamar Blvd. Just north of the lake. Really wonderful stuff.

Artists taking a break from an amazing job of painting huge paintings.

The city of Austin funds "Art in Public Places." A certain percentage of the fees and taxes paid by big developers is used to enhance the city in many, many ways. The new (not too new now) international gates at Austin's airport got some awesome and enormous murals five or six years ago and fun stuff keeps cropping up everywhere I look. While some projects have been in the works for a while I hope they keep the program going during the pandemic so young and upcoming artists get some $$$ support to show and grow their art. 

It's also much more visually exciting to see huge murals instead of old concrete walls next to our well travelled roads. More like this, please. 

From today's walk through downtown with the big honking camera and a big zooming lens. 

Nice to have some cooler weather to walk through. Trying to be careful what I ask for though, the temperature is supposed to drop into the twenties (f) tomorrow night which means we're in for a chilly jaunt from the locker room to the (outdoor) pool on Tuesday morning. And again on Wednesday.

Happens every year. We get used to it. The coldest day I remember swimming was one January day when the temperature was down near 20° and we had a brisk north wind. The pool deck was too icy to walk on so the coaches sanded a path from the side of the pool closest to the locker rooms and we all entered and exited the pool at that one narrow point. 

It was a bit unnerving to see big icicles hanging from the starting blocks. But the pool is always heated to 80° so our biggest issue during the workout was the thick cloud of steam hanging over the top of the water.

Ah, good times.