https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/12/china/china-taiwan-jets-defense-zone-incursion-intl-hnk-ml/index.html
Never presume something can't happen just because it hasn't happened before.
40,000 Russian troops amassing on the border with Ukraine. Repeated Chinese incursions in the Taiwanese air space.
America stretched across the globe.
Interesting times.
I'm the kind of car owner that changes the battery at 3 years even if it's cranking strong. I just don't want to be the guy out in the parking lot on the first cold night of the year looking around to see if anyone has jumper cables. I also replace tires long before you get to the tread wear indicator. It's better in my mind to leave some money on the table rather than getting stuck out in the middle of nowhere with nothing but the little, tiny spare and 100 miles to go...
I've owned all kinds of cars but in the last decade the two that make the most sense for my business and my personal life have been the small SUVs. I don't particularly like the "thrill of driving" the way I did when I was a reckless teenager with a 1965 Buick Wildcat and a taste for speed. The roads are so crowded here in Austin - where I spend 95% of my driving time - that the idea of ultra performance is a joke. There just are no uncluttered roadways with great curves that you can test out the imputed G force capability of your automobile. They no longer exist. Open roads in Austin are at the same level of impending extinction as fax machines.
My current car is a 2019 Subaru Forester. It's got a modest but adequate 182 horsepower, 4 cylinder engine. It's all wheel drive. It's perfect for tossing in light stands, big cases full of lights and lots and lots of camera gear. It's even got a roof rack for those times when you really need to bring along more gear than you should. I bought the car with great expectations but the pandemic came along and limited my driving.....a lot. I've had the car for two years and three months and I'm just now coming up on 16,000 miles on the odometer. Or an average of 8K per year.
When you take your new car in for the free two years of service it seems that the Subaru dealer keeps tabs on the condition and mileage of your vehicle. About six months ago I started getting offers from Subaru's guaranteed trade in program offering me a new, 2021 model for about $4000 plus the trade-in of my car. I ran the numbers and that's actually more generous than the private resale value of the car.
I sat down with my pocket calculator and did some conjecture math. When I hit 20,000 miles with the current car I planned to buy a new set of tires. As I said above, I don't try to squeeze the very last mile out of tires, I replace them when they still have good sidewall flexibility and structural integrity. There's about $1,000. We'll have two routine maintenance visits to the dealer during any given year at about $150 each for $300. We might have to replace other stuff. And there's always the (remote) possibility that something expensive, like the entertainment/control interface electronics could fail. I'd put aside $2,000 over the next two years just to cover the unexpected. We're already close to the difference in cost between keeping the existing car or getting one that's two model years newer.
Then you might consider depreciation. The older car will obviously have a lower resale value given its age relative to a car that's two years newer and two model years newer. That's not a small amount.
Finally, the 2019 marked the introduction of a new chassis design and body changes for the Forester line. Nothing ever goes exactly to plan for a complex machine like a modern car and I'm certain that there have been a number of unannounced changes, modifications and improvements that will all have the effect of increasing net reliability in the newer model. While dealers can't fix as much stuff in cars as camera companies can with firmware updates in cameras the trade off is that each new model year car makers can fix the stuff that was found to be "off" in the previous year or years.
So, here I am with an almost new car in my driveway trying to decide whether or not to go for the trade up. As I understand it the profit for the dealer is more nested in factory to dealer rebates, the ability to order more product to get better discounts, and the fact that recent, low mileage vehicles that are popular are easy to move quickly.
In effect, I'll spend $4,000 or maybe a bit more to get a car that's two years newer, hopefully mechanically and electronically improved, has a start the clock over again new two year warranty and free maintenance for the next two years. And, as I've said a couple of times before, reliability is a big, big issue with me....
I know that some of you are more informed about cars and car stuff than am I and I welcome feedback. Is there a hidden "gotcha" that I haven't been able to figure out yet? Does this seem like a rational thing to do? It's not as if I'll need a loan or have to make payments; it's my intention to write a check for the amount.
I really like my current car. I really like the idea of replacing it with the same model, but two years newer.
If it doesn't work out as projected I really have no problem sticking with the current car. But if it does work then I'll have a big smile on my face for about two more years. Just trying to plan smart.
Your take?
My second reason to like the older camera better in actual use is that it cost me 1/3rd the price. If I accidentally destroy it I'll only cry one third as much and I'll replace it two thirds quicker.
After using the SL with all my different lenses the one I like best for just strolling and shooting at random is the 45mm f2.8 Sigma. It looks perfectly matched to the camera, creates very nice looking photographs and is small and light. It's a lens made for fun. Bigger, heavier lenses are made for business. Or super serious art.
As far as aesthetics go I prefer the bare metal front of the SL over the leather trim on the front of the SL2.
It's all silly I guess, since all the cameras I have at hand are really good photography instruments. Each has its own strengths. From the Fuji X100vs to the S1R.
But we're still winnowing down the overall inventory. Trying to decide if it makes sense to slim down the camera body selection a bit more.... We'll see.
Back to thinking about cars for the rest of the day.
It's a pretty big circle and includes most of the major cities in Texas. When one can drive to Houston in three hours it just doesn't make sense to spend two hours getting to, and waiting at, the airport, deplaning at the other end and wrangling luggage, getting the luggage to the rental car depot, etc, etc. Your time commitment may actually exceed that required to just drive there.
But on the other hand, when I was doing jobs in places like North Carolina one day and Florida the next driving between the two was out of the question. And driving to either location from Austin would have been about as inefficient as I could imagine.
That was all before the pandemic upended travel in a dramatic way. Now the lines at the airports are even longer (because of social distancing, etc.) and rental cars are as scarce as ice cubes in the desert and pricier than a mortgage. Now I feel like I need to recalculate the driving radius and figure out some new boundaries.
Also, just because I've been vaccinated doesn't mean I want to take chances with a Southwest Airlines flight full of dumbass yahoos who think the earth is flat, viruses are the will of a vindictive baby Jesus, and that face masks are for sissies and liberals. In fact, when I called my dentist to reschedule an appointment because of my travel schedule they wanted to know if I was flying since their policy is to wait for at least ten days after any flight before admitting one into their office. I figure there's good logic to that and it conveys also to me seeing clients after a flight!
So, here's my current planning conundrum: I am booked to photograph an assignment in Sante Fe, NM. at the end of this month. I looked up travel information and found that there are no reasonable direct flights from Austin to Sante Fe. I would be booking Southwest Airlines to fly from Austin to Dallas and then from Dallas to Sante Fe. When I get there I'll have to have a rental car. There are none.
The flight time is a little over seven hours for both legs. Add two hours for initial arrival and check-in. That puts us over nine hours. Add an hour to fetch luggage, get a rental car (none currently exist) and get to my hotel. We're looking at ten hours and change to go from door-to-door. That's contingent on no one on the flight tossing down their face mask and challenging a flight attendant which might require us to sit at a gate and wait for police to come and remove the nut job.
The drive from Austin to Sante Fe is about 650 miles. The estimated time on all the mapping apps is about 11 hours of drive time. Add in some breaks for the restroom, coffee regeneration and food and we'll call it 13 hours. I have a new-ish car with only 16,000 miles on the odometer. I can bring all the camera gear I'd ever want to play with and I can hang up suits and dress shirts so they are fresh and ready to go the next morning.
I'm definitely driving and I guess this means that for now I'll extending my boundary range from Austin to a max of about 700 miles. I'd bill for travel days on either end of the project anyway.
It's interesting that we now have different pain points to take into consideration when traveling for work. On some level I think air travel is probably safer than indoor dining at restaurants but I think you are still taking a risk given that we don't know whether or not vaccinated passengers, exposed to the Covid virus, can pass it on to unvaccinated people in turn. My concern is not so much for my personal health but concern for those I'll subsequently come into contact with.
I have always wanted to do a project in Sante Fe. I think driving there is actually more fun given that my return trip isn't bookended by any particular schedule or obligations and I could come back through the White Sands area and the through El Paso and on to Marfa, Texas before heading home. Lots of places to stop and take photographs.
Look for the silver lining in every choice. There's generally always one there.
Back in the early days of my Panasonic S1 system purchases I bought three different Sigma Art lenses. I knew I wanted a fast and sharp 85mm. I thought I could get a long of use out of a fast and sharp 35mm, and I presumed I'd want or need a 20mm lens and there was one in the Art series that seemed like the best choice for optical performance. It was the hefty 20mm 1.4 Art lens.
The one thing all three lenses shared was a far above average size and weight. And most would say, slow autofocusing. The original 85mm 1.4 was replaced this last year by a new version that is 50% smaller and lighter and so I traded up immediately. The new version is also a very high performance lens and delivers great images, even when used wide open. I don't have nostalgia for its predecessor.
The 20mm lens was big and ponderous and I ended up using it on a commercial assignment once. Used wide open the amount of vignetting was beyond amazing. I just don't shoot much super-wide and I thought I could do as well, for the kinds of work I need to do with a very wide angle lens (inside industrial plants, weird landscapes) with the more recent, small and light, 20-60mm Lumix zoom lens. And, as a side note, the 20-60mm is not a bad "walking around" lens. The performance at 20mm when stopped down to f5.6 or f8.0 is absolutely fine for those times when I think I might need to be super wide and it's easy to handle. Having some good range coupled with a big resolution camera means it can often be a solo lens, if the intention of the day is specific to the angles of view on tap.
That left the Sigma 35mm f1.4 Art lens as the odd man out. It's the lens (and focal length) I've had trouble warming up to until now. It's bigger, heavier and bulkier than the slower 35mm lenses I've used in the past so I put it in a drawer and moved on to trying other solutions. I have a 28mm f2.8 Contax/Zeiss lens that I like a lot but it's sometimes too wide for the way I see things; especially when photographing anthropologically, on the streets. I have three different zooms lenses that also include the 35mm focal length in their range and I'm sure any one of the these would work adequately well if stopped down a little bit. But lately I've been missing the crispness of the Sigma 35mm f1.4. It's really sharp in the center of the frame when used wide open but when stopped down to f4.0 it's astonishingly good all across the frame and it delivers a level of detail that I just don't see when using any of my zoom lenses at that focal range.
Recently I saw a video with the lens designer for Leica and he extolled the virtues of his company's lenses (as we knew he would), but under persistent questioning he acknowledged that their 35mm f2.0 SL Summicron was the best of the best. I started thinking about that lens, but was slowed down from purchasing it by two things: The nosebleed pricing of $5,000+ USD and the idea of spending so much on a lens that is less interesting to me than other focal lengths. I wondered just how much use I would get out of a lens with that price tag. And I daydreamed about retiring and ending up with only the 50mm f2.0 SL lens and the SL2 camera --- for everything!
Fortunately, I have a friend who is not constrained by ideas of budget and is also the owner of much recent Leica inventory. I asked him if he had an SL35 and (un)amazingly, he did. I borrowed it for a day and shot with it in a testing sort of way. Trying to discern how it might be better than the lens I already had sitting in the tool cabinet. It's a beautifully made lens but it's also nearly as large and maybe just as heavy as the Sigma 35mm f1.4.
But here's what I found on the optical front when using each lens on the 47+ megapixel Leica SL2, anchored on a big tripod:
There is a look to a 35mm frame when shot at f1.4 that is unique. When used close in the fall off in focus is striking and a look I haven't appreciated enough in the past. You can get a similar look at f2.0 but it's not quite the same and sometimes the subtle differences are important to a photographer's way of seeing.
When both lenses are used at f2.0 the Leica does a better job keeping the corners and edges of the frame critically sharp. I conjecture that the lens is better corrected for field curvature and so doesn't appear to degrade at the periphery in the same way. The Sigma Art lens is just as sharp in the center of the frame and, if you move away from my old school, center focusing methods and move the focusing square over something closer to the edge of the frame the lens is actually sharp there as well; it's just that you can't presume focusing in one plane will include sharpness for both the edges and the center.
By f4.0, where I usually end up working the most, I couldn't really tell a noticeable difference between the lenses. The Leica was a bit contrastier which gave the files from it the appearance of more acutance but when adding contrast to the Sigma I could get the looks pretty close. This is where the logic of spending an extra $4400 dollars fell off the rails. If the lenses were close enough to be considered within the margins of user error at the most used settings was there any logic at all to parting with ever more money?
No.
The one area in which the Leica lens was noticeably better had nothing to do with its imaging performance and everything to do with focusing. In both single AF and continuous AF, in video and regular photography, the Leica's focusing was much quicker and locked on tighter. If AF performance is a higher priority than price, and it makes a difference in your day to day work, then a case could certainly be made that the Leica was worth the spend. Especially when used on a Leica body.
I work in much the same way no matter which camera I use. I set the camera to S-AF, I set the AF mode to either center square of center zone, I point the camera at an object or person I want to photograph, press the shutter button halfway down, lock focus and then push all the way down to actuate. I don't do "back button." I don't do "AFL" or any other permutation of button oriented control. If I need to lock in focus I turn the camera or lens to "MF" and fine tune. I know it's not the way everyone else works but it's my methodology.
Once I thought about all this it became clear to me that I needed to come to grips with my thoughts about the Sigma. It's a very powerful imaging tool in a very valuable focal length. And it's actually quite affordable for what it is. Sigma also produces a new, i-Series 35mm f2.0 and I've considered buying one of those and selling the Sigma Art but I have a sneaking suspicion that the trade off for lighter weight and smaller size is a compromise of overall optical performance. It's interesting that right now one can buy the 35mm f2.0 for about $639 or the Art lens for $799. The compromises are straightforward.
In the moment I lean more towards the less compromising overall performance of the Art lens. But take that with a grain of salt. I'm waiting for my local camera store to get in their shipment of the i-Series 35mm lens so I can try one out and compare it. If the visual differences are negligible I'll trade the speed for the smaller profile and reduced weight. But as it is I newly enjoying taking the Art lens out for a spin. It's really very good as far as its ability to produce really snappy and detailed images. And it's not as if clients are falling all over themselves to have photos made at the highest end of possible production quality.
I'm happy to have the 35mm Art lens for another reason; I think Sigma pushed to bounds of design and craft to make the original Art series lenses and created optical systems that are as relevant and near perfect as this lens was at its introduction in 2012 (the family of, not this particular mount). It's a bit of a classic and in the future we'll have different choices such as stepping up to the Art 35mm f1.2 or stepping down to the i-Series. The 1.4 will have its own distinctive look and it's possible that it's a look I'll like better than what I'm offered in the future.
I'm off for a walk with a Leica SL and the 35mm f1.4 Art. I just updated the lens firmware so the power consumption vis-a-vis the battery reads correctly to the camera. I guess I'll see if I ever get comfortable with the 35mm focal length. It's a struggle.
Just a thought: Panasonic did announce a 35mm f1.8 on their most recent roadmap. That makes for another contender is the leisurely contest of 35mm lenses for the L-mount.
It's easy to predict that we'll start having back-order issues in short order. It may be one of the reasons behind the two month backlog of Leica Q2 cameras. It may already be the primary reason camera makers like Panasonic have fallen behind on lenses already announced on their product roadmaps.
But a bigger concern in the long run is the increasing aggression of the mainland Chinese government against Taiwan. The Chinese military have stepped up all manner of harassment against the tiny island nation in their quest to assimilate it back into communist control and ownership. But some of the biggest and most advanced makers of semiconductor components are located on Taiwan. Should open hostilities break out companies like Apple, and other computer makers, and car and truck makers, will run out of supply for parts for new laptops, iPads and, eventually, phones. Not to mention Ford F150 trucks; which would cause widespread panic in Texas.
Any disruption measured in time longer than days will roil the markets for just about all the fun toys we love. From cars to TVs, to our beloved cameras and lenses.
I'm not sure how firmly this is showing up on most people's radar but in the case of a company like Apple a month long glitch in critical supply would cause panic in the stock market which might retard any economic recovery and cause a net loss of hundreds of billions of dollars of investor capital. And a lot of jobs.
The current shortage seems to have stemmed from the quick shut down of demand for the first six to eight months of the pandemic. Ramping up for increased production is complicated and takes time.
But a shooting war between China and Taiwan would result in a disruptions the likes of which we haven't seen in a long time. And the fall out will include a lot more than delivery times lines for cameras and lenses.
Just something to think about. As if we don't have enough to worry about....
Am I missing something? Do you have additional (factual) information that might make me less anxious about the whole situation? Share it please.
I like this off hand photograph of actor, MATT McGRATH as Sergei Pavlovich Diaghliev in the late Terrence McNally's last play. McNally came to Austin to produce his final piece, Immortal Longings back in 2019.
I made it a habit, back when the theatre was open and running, to drop by the early rehearsals and try to get some interesting shots that we might use for human interest stories and stuff like that. Maybe short teasers for the news outlets...
In these visits I didn't have a brief, there were no expectations of any particular sort. I'd stay for an hour if the rehearsal was slow and draggy or multiple hours if there was constantly changing visual stimuli. It was totally up to me. And since I was hanging out at the early part of previously unproduced plays I had no idea of how the action would flow or even what to expect.
Occasionally I would read the script in advance but not usually.
It was early Fall of 2019 when this play was being produced. It changed a lot throughout the process. Even after the first week's "soft" opening the script was being cut or edited or added to between shows. A wild process when compared to commercial work. On the evening I dropped by I was still working with Fuji cameras and I was particularly interested in the 56mm f1.2 lens and how it rendered images.
I tried to project a low energy, anonymous persona and I tried not to engage anyone while I was shooting. More of a "fly on the wall" sort of perspective. I'd see something I liked and I would shoot a few frames. Then I'd put my camera down at the end of its strap and wait, passively, for something to change or build or even fall apart. It's the only way I know of to get really authentic working photographs. Stuff that doesn't look set up because it's not.
We used to do something like this process with conventional clients as well. We'd come into their location and treat the project like anthropology. I'd walk around and just look for images that told small stories. Expressions, details, gestures, etc.
It seems that now we have shot lists, tight schedules, and we have to hurry through them. And when we finish the clients head for the doors and scatter. It's not just a reaction to the pandemic because the "adventure" of advertising photography had been heading in this direction of "cut and dry" non-engagement for while.
A fantasy I used to have earlier in my career would be getting hired to do a historic documentation of a major company like Dell or IBM (in its earliest days) where one would work in the same way that the White House photographers worked (pre-Trump). Which was with day-to-day and hour-by-hour access in an attempt to create a visual history of an administration. Or the early history of an important company.
We used to do more of this but I guess in today's efficiency obsessed arenas, and with clients who demand total control, the casual, photojournalistic style of documentary photography is failing quickly.
Too bad. I really liked it. It was the magic ingredient for visual story telling. "It" being time spent exploring and photographing whatever catches your eyes...
A re-publication of an article from 2008.
A Medium Format Digital Camera With Enhanced Handling. Phase One Delivers The Goods.
by Kirk Tuck
In the past few years medium format digital cameras have captured a smaller and smaller share of camera sales worldwide for two reasons: 1. They seem to come equipped with extravagant price tags... and, 2. They handled, for the most part, like the Frankenstein inventions they were. The communication between the removable backs and the traditional camera bodies was kludgy and slow. Autofocus implementation seemed like an afterthought and the “mix and match” batteries had the endurance of a chain smoker trying to run a marathon. It’s little wonder that many photographers chose to go with high megapixel DSLR style cameras like the Canon 1DS mk3.
But in 2008 the landscape is beginning to shift. Prices seems to be dropping even while pixel counts are rising while at the same time the engineering that matters is getting better and better. The Hasselblad 3D camera system seems focused on providing the tightest integration on the market. Its totally closed system of backs, body and lenses is a contrast to the less integrated but far more open system that was introduced in the form of the Hy6 body being used by Sinar, Leaf, and Rollei. The problem with the Hasselblad system is that it is closed to outside vendors which prohibits you from being able to select the digital back you might really want. An issue with the Hy6 systems is that, in order to provide the most “open” system, the integration of lenses, bodies and backs is less elegant.
The bottom line is that the camera bodies, lenses and support accessories are actually the foundation or platform for an efficient and effective medium format system. These parts should be a long term investment that stands the test of time while allowing for backs to be upgraded as technology improves. Nikon and Canon understand that your real, long term investment will be in their lenses, not in their camera bodies. Now the medium format digital camera makers are starting to come around. And the competition will start to heat up.
Mamiya and Phase One have teamed up to take advantage of a truly open platform that promises to run over the competition by dint of having a wide and growing vertical integration of options for medium format shooters. Phase One makes incredible, high density digital camera backs. Mamiya makes one of the most comfortable high performance medium format camera bodies on the market today. Bundled together the combination is formidable competition for everyone in this small market. And it’s not an entirely exclusive relationship. If technology moves on and the Phase One back becomes obsolete the open nature of the camera system leaves ample space for you to choose replacement backs from a range of suppliers, including Leaf and even Mamiya. Kudos to Phase One and Mamiya for establishing a clean upgrade path.
A fun part of camera reviewing is unwrapping the packages after the FedEx truck trundles away. I recently reviewed a passel of Leica stuff, including an M8 and four lenses. They arrived rattling around in a box in a sea of styrofoam peanuts and nothing else. No manuals, no original boxes. No additional protection. By contrast, the Phase One camera system arrived in a really bulletproof manner: A solid cardboard box, filled with the requisite peanuts, held a solid hard case. Inside the highly protective (and water/weatherproof ) case was a system obviously packed by a truly obsessive person. Every piece had its own compartment and the overall package included manuals, cables, and even a memory stick with an extensive user’s guide.
Here are the basic details of the Phase One camera I tested: The camera itself is a rebadged Mamiya AFD3 camera body. The back is Phase One’s latest 39 megapixel back, the 45+. The back and the body looked like a matched set and featured the same matte surface finish. The AFD3 is the fourth generation of the Mamiya 645 AF format camera body. As a camera system that’s been on the market for well over a decade just about any flaw or shortcoming has been eliminated during its long evolution. What is left is a camera that handles just about as easily as a Nikon D3 or a Canon 1DS xx camera. The traditional camera functions were absolutely flawless and as easy to understand as just about any camera in the market today. I’ll be frank, I loved the body and the lenses more than any other medium format camera I have ever handled. And that’s saying a lot since I’ve owned a slew of Rollei 6000 variants, many Hasselblads, as well as Pentax 645’s. The Mamiya body represents the very best that medium format manufacturers have been able to design. Your mileage may vary but not by much.
The only caveat I would have about buying the Mamiya camera body would be for users who need to be able to remove the pentaprism finder and replace it with a waistlevel finder or other accessory. That doesn’t seem like a pressing priority for most photographers as even stalwarts like Nikon and Canon have done away with the removable finders that, in the past, were always part of their professional camera bodies.
So, thumbs up to the camera body, let’s move on to the lenses. All the senuous body ergonomics in the world are meaningless if the glass doesn’t measure up. I’ve compared it with the Zeiss glass I own for my Rollei system as well as the Schneider glass used in the Leaf camera system (Hy6) and at 100% on my monitor the Mamiya glass definitely makes the grade. I worked with three lenses while testing the Phase One camera system, a really incredible 28mm lens, a 75mm to 150mm f 4.5 zoom lens and the 80mm f2.8 “normal” lens.
The 28mm Phase One lens is, along with the digital 28 from Hasselblad, the widest production lens available for medium format digital SLR systems. With a field of view that matches a 17mm lens on a 35mm camera this 14 element wide angle is a powerful optic. This, along with the 45mm tilt shift lens offered by Phase One, should really appeal to architectural photographers who miss the highly corrected wide angles they used on their 4x5 view cameras. The image quality of the 75 to 150mm Mamiya zoom blew away the output of my 75 to 150mm Schneider zoom for the Rollei while the 80 was sharp, well behaved, and a welcome relief from all the big, fat glass of the other optics. While not silent focusing lenses with integral motors, the lenses were quick to autofocus and bitingly sharp at all medium apertures.
There’s an additional advantage to the Mamiya system. They’ve been making a wide range of autofocus and specialty lenses for their 645AF camera system for the better part of 15 years. The landscape is literally littered with great used lenses at ridiculously good prices. And all of these AF lenses, as well as many of the manual lenses from previous Mamiya systems, are usable on the Phase One body. If you are so inclined you can also pick up a real, live film back and shoot your choice of slide, color print or black and white film!
For my money, the Mamiya AFD3 camera and lens implementation is close to perfect. That leaves the digital back. Here’s what I want from a digital back: I want it to be so boring in actual operation that I don’t have to waste any mindshare worrying about it. It should start up quickly, the menu and control options should be straighforward and easy to set, it should be easy to shoot tethered, its raw files should be intelligently compressed and write quickly to disk, and the LCD screen should give me a good idea of what I’m capturing under all lighting conditions. The back should be parsimonious with batteries and should not have any “nervous tics” or idiosyncrasies. It should give me enormous, high bit depth files that brutally trump the resolution, color accuracy and other rendering characteristic of all smaller format cameras.
So, how does it stack up?
Set up: One click of its power button and the back springs to life. It takes three seconds from button touch to open the menu. All the back navigation is done with four silver buttons on the back and all the menus are straightforward and easy to understand. I felt right at home with the back in the first half hour of operation. Unlike other systems which offer a range of profiles and adjustments in nested menus the Phase One 45+ back sticks to the basics, “format, white balance, etc.” The benefit? You’re up and shooting quickly.
Shooting tethered: Here Phase One cheats. They offer a big, fat fireware port (not one of those mini, four connector fireware pinholes) with which to tether the camera and then they provide you with one of the best software systems for tethering and raw conversion found on planet Earth right now: Capture One. To say that tethering the camera and shooting to a Mac laptop is smooth and easy is an understatement. Do it twice and it becomes as easy and fun as eating chocolate. In six weeks I never lost connection with the back and never had a crash.
Writing with RAW: Okay. Each of these files opens up as a tiff that is over 120 megabytes but... sitting on the card, waiting to be hatched, they are a slim 33 megabytes. Using Sandisk 4gb Extreme cards gave me a system that shot at approximately 1.5 fps and rarely left me waiting with a full buffer. One thing I would love would be the option to shoot at a reduced file size as I don’t always need the full bucket of pixels for the kind of portrait work I do. It’s a feature I always loved on the Kodak DSLR/n cameras. They were capable of shooting raw files at 14 megs 6 megs and 3 megs. It was a very underrated camera.…….
Chimping: The LCD screen is fine in the studio and just okay out in the Texas sunlight. I bring along my Hoodman viewing chimney along when I head outdoors and with that accessory in hand I was able to see the histograms and check relative light balances. It’s no match for the three inch screen on the back of a Nikon D90 which costs a mere $999 but then the D90’s not really up to making a 17 by 22 inch print at 300 dpi with little or no interpolation either! If you shoot tethered the LCD becomes a convenient “menu” screen while all serious evaluation gets done on your laptop.
Batteries: Like the Leaf camera I tested several months ago the Phase One camera/back system uses two sets of batteries. One set of “off the shelf” double “A’s” powers the camera body and the autofocus functions while the back is powered by one of the ubiquitous and “not interchangeable with any other appliance” lithium batteries that manufacturers have become so fond of. In six weeks of shooting I never had to change out the Kirkland brand, Costco double “A” alkaline batteries I in shoved into the camera handgrip. The back was another story. Depending on how often I checked the image on the LCD the battery for the digital back lasted for between 120 and 240 exposures. As the back can also draw power from the firewire connection the short battery life isn’t problematic in the studio. Location shooters will want to take at least three of the batteries with them on the road. Another bright spot for the camera back was the included battery charger which can charge two batteries at a time and has a nice little info window for each battery indicating where the battery is in its charge cycle. Cheers for an efficient and well made charger system.
If I were to use the Phase One 45+ back in its un-tethered mode often I would want to have a repair person whip me a up a cable and connector to use with a Quantum Turbo battery or Digital Camera battery for day long shooting.
Cutting To The Chase: The image quality from the back was very, very good. Having worked my way through the early generations of digital cameras my proclivity is to always use digital cameras at their lowest rated sensitivity. I started using the Phase One 45+ at its calibrated ISO 50 setting but after reviewing my first test files I got braver and started playing with the sensitivity settings. The back is flawless up to 200 ISO and even ISO 400 is amazingly clean. I didn’t get to do too many long exposures with the camera but I did deliberately try it at 4 and 8 seconds and got back files that were essentially noiseless using ISO 100.
While Adobe ACR works well on Phase One 45+ files, yielding neutral colors and high sharpness, Capture One (the RAW conversion software created by Phase One for a wide range of camera raw files) renders files that are breathtaking. Fine detail is more translucent while color is rendered with a more lifelike differentiation in tonality and subtlety. But whatever your software choice for massaging your files you need to be ready for a totally different computing experience than you’ll likely have with something like a Nikon D3 file. The Phase One files are huge once they are opened and operations that appeared seamless on my Intel processor Mac machine move a good bit slower with the Phase One files whether in ACR or Capture One.
Bottom Line: There were no stumbles with the holistic Phase One system. The camera is quite fluid and its operation becomes second nature within minutes of use. The lenses are as good and as varied as any available for any of the other systems. There is the added benefit of a decade and a half of lens development which means more choices at more price points. The back is well behaved and plays quite well with the body. And the Capture One software is the component that brings all the other pieces together and raises them to the next level. In fact, Capture One is so good I now find myself using it with my Nikon files instead of the visually splendid but very interfaced challenged, Nikon Capture NX.
Would I buy the system? If I were in the market for a medium format system I would consider the Mamiya/Phase One option for several reasons. First, the open nature of the system is wonderful. An entry level professional could opt for a lower priced system from Mamiya with the intention of moving up to one of Phase One’s better backs as his or her business grows. Second, the feeling of integration makes the camera and back a joy to shoot. It actually harkens back to the golden days of film when one could shoot more and think less about technology.
Who Needs A Medium Format Digital System? Many argue that today’s 21 and 24 megapixel cameras are “good enough” but nothing in the 35mm style comes close to equaling the look you get with the increased real estate of the Phase One sensor and the way larger format lenses “draw”. This camera and back combination is the perfect match for any photography that requires very high production value or loads of detail. In closing, this system (and its direct competitors) is the antidote for “good enough”. It renews and supports our commitment as artists to aim for perfection. Even if the only audience that really cares is ourselves!
Kirk Tuck is a corporate photographer in Austin, Texas who also writes books about photography. His first book, Minimalist Lighting: Professional Techniques for Location Photography, has been a best seller since its publication. His second book on Studio Photography Techniques is due out in the Spring of 2009, and he is currently hard at work on a third book about which he is very secretive.……..
Website: www.kirktuck.com
So, it's Tuesday morning and I thought I should give a quick report on Operation Raccoons in the Chimney. Yesterday I did some research and melded it together with the stories and suggestions shared here. One person with some raccoon experience suggested that I take the cap back off the chimney to allow the mom raccoon to get in and relocate her loved ones. It sounded like a good idea. It was seconded by a person from the critter removal service we have used in the past. But, even though hope springs eternal I did make an appointment to meet here at the house with the same animal removal service in case our "voluntary relocation opportunity" failed. We meet in the next hour or so...
I dutifully took the cap off yesterday but it was already partially dislodged so I know at least one of the parents is still around. I also devised a bizarre ladder with the idea that transporting baby raccoons up a sheer face might be too daunting. I need to go take a picture of my ladder creation but I didn't have any thick rope around so I took two 50 foot extension cords and used the stoutest one as a straight "rope" and then used the second one to make load bearing loops at 12 inch intervals --- something for a raccoon to grab onto or use as a foot hold. I know, it's silly... but I'm trying to encourage an undramatic exit for them.
Since I had replaced the cap at the start of the weekend I was now worried the babies would die of starvation or dehydration. To ward off that avenue of guilt I went to Trader Joes and bought a couple organic, honey crisp apples, sliced them, bundled them loosely in a paper towel and dropped them down the chimney. I hope they enjoyed them.
As night fell we turned off most of the outside lights in order to make the adult raccoon potentially more comfortable during its incursion. I didn't hear any noises coming from the roof but I guess I could have slept through them.
When I got up this morning to get ready for swim practice I tiptoed into the living room and paused to listen at the fireplace. There was no movement and everything was quiet. I made a cup of hot tea and read the various news feeds and was just about ready to pat myself on the back when the racket of young raccoons restarted. Crestfallen, I headed off to swim practice. More to follow a brief run down of swim practice.
Swimming for fun and good health. Any bleak and sallow day is made much better with a morning swim workout at the Rollingwood Swimming Pool.
I've incorporated my Apple Watch into my swimming because I was miffed when I swam long workouts with a dive watch and later in the day my Apple device would subtly chide me for not being active enough. It's pretty cool to have your watch count actual laps for you and also use its GPS to calculate distance swum. There is some attempt calculate how many calories one burns but I think it's a bit suspect. My watch is telling me that I burned 530 calories during the swim. It's a bit amazing but it also breaks down the percentage of each stroke swum. Since we had a demanding freestyle set most of the yardage was freestyle but there is also a running tally of backstroke and breast stroke and I'm presuming its classification of "mixed stroke" means butterfly.
My lane mates and I knocked down 3200 yards in 55 minutes so I think we did pretty well. I can also look at the chart of heart rate measurements and see that my resting heart rate before workout was around 51 bpm but during workout it peaked at around 154 bpm. I'm surprised that my heart rate peaks so high but I'm sure the 100 yards of butterfly was a contributing factor in that. So, I'm guessing I'm working right near the upper edge of safe cardiovascular performance. It's also interesting to see how quickly a high bpm drops back down in the 70s and 80s.
Lately our coach has been enamored of a laddered set of 100 yard freestyle repeats with an ever descending interval. We started out with five 100s on a 1:35 minute interval, dropped to four 100s on a 1:30 interval, then dropped to three 100s on a 1:25 interval, two 100s on 1:20 and then one 100 at a full sprint. We did other stuff but that was the main set. The swims on 1:20 were right at the ragged edge of my capabilities so I either need to train more or get younger. Or, I could accept aging and give myself a bigger interval.
We ended the workout with one of my lane mate's favorites. A series of 25 yard swims, all underwater. I'm convinced that everyone can hold their breath for the 20 or 25 seconds it takes to swim underwater from one end of the pool to the other but there is a psychological impediment for most people after the second or third lap (with short breaks in between) that comes into play. Conquer the fear and underwater laps aren't nearly as daunting. Or....keep the fear and pop up to grab nervous breaths long before you need them, physically.
We were out of the water by 9 am and on to coffee and breakfast. My watch tells me I've completed my required exercise and activity for the day but I scoff at its presumption and am still planning a nice, long walk this afternoon. Just after I hear about how we're going to handle the raccoons.
New to swimming? Grab a pull buoy. It's a floatable foam construction you put between your thighs to raise your overall horizontal body position in the water which makes swimming easier. It also reduces your need to kick as quickly or as hard (in fact, you probably don't need to kick at all with a pull buoy in place). You'll develop a better feel for your arm strokes and a the better position in the water will help you streamline more. It's a less painful way to get started swimming longer distances. Eventually, you'll want to give up the pull buoy so you don't become dependent because the officials are not going to let you use one for a race; either in the pool or in open water...
Back to the raccoons. Our person from Critter Control arrived and I took him up onto the roof so we could look down the chimney with a flash light and get oriented. Yep. We've got a mom raccoon and some baby raccoons down there. They are on a platform which includes the flue. They seem nice a comfy but that's not a good thing. Right now the estimator is out in his truck conferring with his regional boss to try to devise a plan of (humane) attack. More to follow....
Leica-Allure. It's easy to dismiss the whole Leica brand as nothing but highly successful marketing and product positioning, and, for the most part in 2021 I'd agree. But with some caveats. First of all I think you need to see the M Leica's (the interchangeable lens, true rangefinder cameras) as a whole separate category. They are unlike all the other interchangable lens cameras in the market and there are benefits to working with a rangefinder camera. Especially if your focal length wheel house is from 28-75mm.
Coincident rangefinder focusing can be quick and highly accurate in that range. The ability to see "outside" the frame, in the finder, is a big plus because it allows one to anticipate when something is coming into the composition. Some people also find being able to see outside the bright frame lines as an advantage in composition. These things are different from all the other cameras and if you want them you are stuck with Leica. Or you'll happily embrace the Leica.
So many of the Leica rangefinder users are driven to the brand by nostalgia since Leica was a predominant choice of so many famous magazine journalists in the 1950s and 1960s and the camera type seemed to be a badge or a talisman for most of those famous Magnum photographers all the way up to today. Plus, many in my generation had fathers who were photo hobbyists and we "learned" from a young age that the Leica M was the top of the heap for camera in their generation. I think many of us harbored the aspiration to own one from a young age; regardless of whether it was the "right" camera for our use...
The Leica mirrorless cameras are a different beast. If one understands that new plastics and compounds are as good and capable of precision as metal, and that sensors are pretty uniformly homogeneous across systems then the SL line is, I think, a different market altogether. You essentially have to choose to pay a lot more for two thing beyond "build quality" ( which few of us are really able to gauge... ). One is access to the family of Leica L mount lenses and the second is the totally different presentation of the control interface.
As far the lenses go you could save about half the cost of an SL2 body by getting a Panasonic S1R body and you'd be able to use the same L-mount lenses. There might be additional firmware resident in the SL2 body that tweaks each lens to a greater degree than the more generic firmware in the lens itself but I can't think this would make a world of difference using either of the cameras.
At some point, if you want to work with Leica SL lenses you might as well have one of the SL bodies on the presumption that power consumption, firmware tweaks and AF performance would be optimized as a system.
This all presumes that you buy into the idea that Leica SL lenses noticeably outperform lenses available in other systems. Some will believe this and some won't...
Finally there is the topic of the interface. The back of each SL and SL2 camera is quintessentially minimalist. The number of buttons and dials is reduced to next to nothing. On the SL nothing is labeled while the SL2 uses the same three buttons system found on current M cameras. Each simplifies as much as possible and the whole machine-ness of the camera body recedes from conscious notice and becomes more transparent to the operator. I love the interfaces on both the SL and SL2 cameras, even though they are different. The important point is that they are alike in philosophy and general logic.
Taken altogether a purchase of a Leica as system camera is probably not very wise for most people. While the lenses seem to hold their value well the resale value of digital Leica bodies doesn't seem to outperform that of Canon, Nikon and Sony's better cameras. Losing half the value of a Canon 5Dmkiii is less painful than losing half the value of a $6500 camera. Even if the percentage of loss is the same.
If you buy into the Leica stuff to use professionally you'll find big blank spots in the equipment catalog. There are few "inexpensive" Leica lens options for those focal lengths you don't use as often. Right now camera batteries are backordered. There's no current SL macro lens. Etc. Oh, and if you want a vertical grip for your SL2 be prepared to spend north of $1,000 to acquire one. It's a bleak scenario for less affluent photographers who get called upon to do a wide range of projects.
I guess the reason I wanted a couple of the Leica SL system camera bodies was a blend of all the positive things. I love the heritage of the brand. Most of my favorite photographers used the Leica cameras as their life long tools. One hopes some of their luck with the cameras confers through my own Leica's (irrational at best). The handling is wonderful and the menus grow on me by the day. But most of all the system represents the idea of products that sit at the pinnacle of photographic practice for most knowledgeable photographers and when you shoot with one you have, at least, the impression that you aren't leaving possibilities on the table because you scrimped on investing.
Now, back to the raccoons. After an hour of exploration and researching around the chimney, coupled with our assertion that we were looking for a humane resolution, our "wildlife consultant" sat down with me in the studio to go over a plan. We're going to ask the mom raccoon to take her babies and relocate.
We'll leave the cap off the chimney. We'll drop down a bigger and better rope. One with knots in it for resting spots and stability while climbing. The service will drop down a cotton ball dipped in some amazingly expensive witch's brew of male raccoon hormones, coyote sweat, something else equally bad, like that aftershave your friend thinks is a real chick magnet, and hope that they smell convinces Rita Raccoon to de-camp. We'll be ready to put up with additional occupancy for several days as she makes up her mind, looks for better accommodations and goes through the process of moving the brood. Then, once we're certain that they've vacated, the service will return to create a better barrier to accessing the chimney. They'll also go around the entire house and studio to make sure they are no other fun entry points for other pests and they'll seal those.
In a week or ten days we hope to have total resolution. And we'll move on to the next project which, I think, entails the replacement of 25 year old skylights on the back porch. Followed by the installation of a new hardwood floor for the living room followed by...........(fill in the blank).
But for now I'll be happy just to say "goodbye" to the raccoons.
