Gone out to shoot some squares. Back in a while.

 

SXSW Television Programming Promotion.

We are currently out of the office playing with 

a fast, 35mm lens and a nice camera body. 

Please check back later for more posts.

Wildlife update.

 On the beach. Iceland. 2018.

The raccoons have officially left the chimney. We stopped hearing anything the day after our Critter Control person dangled the "coyote cloth" down the chimney. The mom hissed at it's arrival and there was a lot of chattering from the kits but later that night things quieted down. By the next evening everything was silent. 

A technician came by earlier today to confirm and spent a lot of time making sure that nobody got left behind. Once he was certain he called in the exclusion expert who applied thick screens and other barriers to the top of the chimney. He also did a couple of 360s around the house to look for any other weak spots. 

We are now sealed up and ready to resume life in a more relaxed fashion. Apparently, no raccoons were harmed in the process but they were inconvenienced and are probably paying high rent in their new digs. 

While I liked all the people that Critter Control sent by I hope not to have to see them in their "official" capacity in the future. 

Just thought it was important to loop back on this topic and provide some closure for those who were tracking the progress of my encounters with wildlife.

Thanks for your interest. 

An art gallery and other expressions of popular culture in Austin. Oh, and a few images just because we like the pretty colors.... Oh, one or two pix? NSFW. Unless you work from home.

Tired of raccoons, tired of cars, tired of tax accounting, and tired of being cooped up. I took a lightweight camera out on Saturday to see what might be going on outside these days. Here are a few images from a dubious art gallery show called, "Provocateurs." And then a few images from the bar scene. And a few images of questionable fashion photography and then just some nice, bright colors. 

When you don't have anything in particular in mind it's nice to take a small camera like the Fuji X100V along with you. Put that sucker on auto and remember to look up above eye level every once in a while.

Bummed to have the end of the month show cancelled, postponed, rescheduled or whatever. Happy the raccoons seem to be gone.

I've been watching the Canon, Nikon and Sony announcements with some interest since this is and Olympics year and if Japan pulls off the Olympics the three big camera companies will all want to be on site in force. It seems like the new, Canon R3 is a nod toward sports photographers who want to go with a mirrorless option and, I'll be surprised if the Nikon Z9 isn't designed with sports photographers in mind as well. Sony has already shown their hand with the Alpha One. I'm still reeling at the idea of 50 megapixel files shot at 30 fps. And that's raw+jpeg, not just one or the other. I'm still trying to imagine how the poor editors sitting in trailers around the various Olympic venues are going to edit that stuff... Talk about filling up hard drive space. 

The problem for Nikon and Canon, and to a certain degree, also Sony is that there are actually very, very few long, fast lenses available for any of the recent mirrorless systems. I'm thinking about the much used sports optics like 400mm f2.8 or f3.5s, the 500mms, 600mms and 800mms that I saw in use by many shooter in the last two games. When push comes to shove I wonder how many photographers will have to retrench into the D6s and 1DXmk3s to get the job done the way they want it done. And how can Sony retrench? It should be an interesting time.

I'm not sure it matters that much these days. I keep hearing from my younger photography friends who are shooting sports professionally that so many of the resources are being aimed almost completely toward the video crews. Many of whom will be originating in 8K and 6K this year. If they increase the shutter speeds and frame rates there is real potential to pull stills from the video footage that rival the generation of 24 megapixel still cameras still in wide use for events like these. 

When one considers how close a 30 fps in stills and a 30 fps in video are it's largely a toss up except that still photographers can opt to shoot higher quality raws. I can't imagine film crews choosing the shoot raw for events like this. The would need cargo trucks to haul off the storage drives...

Mirrorless for pro sports will have arrived when the long, fast lenses show up...

Another shot just because I wanted to see the difference between Leica color and Fuji cameras. Straight out of the camera? Fuji in first place.

 

Pandemic rescheduling strikes again. New car smell. Fun with dealers. A bad day for walking around taking pix.... (sad).

 

What a whirlwind of a day! My first call of the morning was with the client for our project in Sante Fe. Guess what? Yep. It's been pushed back to the Fall. The CEO decided that the risks outweighed the cost of re-scheduling and pulled the plug. I have a cancellation policy but it wouldn't have kicked in till next week. Besides, I like the client and I'll be working with them on other profitable jobs this year. So now I go from planning overland routes through Roswell, and trying to decide whether to drive or fly, to having more time at the end of the month for playing and swim practices. My cameras will be disappointed. 

This is not really a rare occurence these days. People are bad at predicting the future and I'm guessing when they set up this meeting late last year all the predictions were that Covid infections would be waning by now. Then, this year, after the emergency approval of three vaccines everyone was predicting a quick ramp up in acceptance and wide spread immunity. Ah well. I am so much better at predicting the past...

Now, on to today's obsession. A reader/commenter left a comment that said once a car lets you down it's gone for him. I work the same way. It's all about reliability. The offer to upgrade from a 2019 Subaru Forster to a new, 2021 model (identical trim and finish) came on a day when I noticed the smell of coolant coming from under the hood. I checked and the coolant was half way between "full" and "low." All at once I wondered if the car would fail me with plumes of steam out in the middle of west Texas, hundreds of miles from any service station and further than that to a Subaru dealer. That's when I took the offer more seriously. Yes, the 2019 is still under warranty and I was pretty sure they could find and fix a leak if it existed but just the faint smell of coolant introduced a tiny measure of doubt in my mind.

It's all academic now that the job which required the cross country drive is postponed. But what the heck? 

After a chat on the phone with the dealer I decided I would drive out today and test drive a second car I've also been interested in; the Subaru Outback. It would cost a bit more to upgrade to that but I was willing to spend the money if I liked the ride and the overall feel better. They had an Outback ready for me when I walked up. I drove it around for twenty minutes, hated the lessened visibility, felt like the slightly bigger car just wasn't as nimble as the Forester, and made up my mind. 

I went ahead a bought the new 2021 Forester. No hidden costs or charges. Exactly what they agreed to in the first place. Only hitch? They didn't have one in stock and will have to ship it in from another dealer. They found the exact car I want in Lubbock. It will be trucked here late this week or the first of next week. I offered to sign the papers and hand over a check today but the dealership's administrative office was backed up and I would have had to wait an hour to get it done. Instead they garaged my old car, handed me the keys to a brand new Legacy sport as a loaner and called it a day. And, yes, they are eating the transportation charge to get the new car here. 

They'll have paperwork ready for me to come in and sign on Friday. Once the car arrives they'll take care of having the windows tinted exactly as they were for my last car and then they'll deliver the car to my house and pick up their loaner. Easy as pie. 

Austin Subaru is great to deal with. Both B. and I have bought new cars from them and enjoyed the process and the hands-on service. They are currently the biggest Subaru dealer in the country, by volume. One of the things I like about them is that the first two years or 24,000 of ownership includes all maintenance. You pay for nothing for the first two years. Nice. 

I'm driving a sporty new Legacy right now and while it's a nice car I've decided I no longer really like sedans. The visibility of the Forester spoils you for alert, high visibility driving. That's why it's Consumer Reports top choice this year for its class. 

No camera work today. I'm always a bit distraught when I go a whole day without taking photographs. With swim practice, an early business call, a late morning coffee meeting with a video guy, and then a formal lunch to celebrate an anniversary with another couple whose anniversary falls on the same day, followed by some inefficient time spent at the car dealership, there just wasn't an opportunity to pull a camera out of a bag and click off some well considered frames. Or any frames. 

Sad, because there is a Leica SL with a 50mm lens on it sitting quietly on my desk, looking at me and saying, softly: "tsk, tsk. How could you abandon us for the day?"

gotta go. It's my turn to cook dinner. It's been that kind of day....

More about photography later...

Taking a break from the drudgery of photography to go out to eat at a real restaurant (for the second time in 12 months) with my wife. Yes. I took a camera..... (sigh!).

Salmon with a tomato reduction on a bed of 

shredded Brussel sprouts, cannoli beans and 

bits of prosciutto. Amazing.

Since the beginning of the pandemic we've shied away completely from going to eat at restaurants. Neither of us has gone to eat inside a "sit down" restaurant to dine in over a year. I guess we still haven't. But last night we had something to celebrate and we headed to our favorite Austin restaurant; Asti. They have a beautiful outside patio and their service and attention to detail is impeccable. The restaurant is owned by a close friend of ours named Emmett Fox. He swims with me in our masters program and he's been running wonderful restaurants for the 30 years that I've known him.

It felt strange after 12 months of curbside pick-up, and hundreds and hundreds of home cooked meals, to actually go out to a restaurant, to sit down at a well set table and be waited on by professional restaurant staff. It's something we very much missed. 

As I said, we did reserve our table on the outside patio and not the interior. We would not have broken our restaurant quarantine in the recent past but we were, in part, celebrating that both B. and I have gotten our vaccines and gotten past the two week "afterburner" period during which one ascends to full immunity. Or as full of immunity as any vaccine has the potential to impart. That, in itself, was something to celebrate.

The experience could not have been more pleasant. We arrived during the last light of the day and were seated at a corner table with a nice view. The temperature was perfect and the waning light, sliding into twilight, felt as though Roger Deakins had lit the set for us.

There was a gentle breeze slow dancing around the tables and no one seemed to be in a rush. The diners nearest us (at  socially responsible distances) were happy, calm and quiet.

I brought along a camera so I could take a photo of B. for my personal scrapbook but I also snapped a photo of my entrée just for fun. 

Two hours of pure pleasure. Life how it used to be. 

36.

 

Circling back to photography and raccoons. 2021 portraits. 2021 raccoon resettlement.

studio portrait. tech exec.

 

I've been working on a series of portraits in the studio again. For my main light I'm using a Godox SL150ii shining into a Godox P120L soft box. We used to call these octaboxes but this one uses so many poles inside we might have to call it a dodecahedron box. 

I like dark shadows. I like the contrast. But some clients don't understand the whole "face sculpting" methodology/aesthetic and want faces to be evenly lit, from side to side. Those are generally clients I need to send to other photographers. 

One of my photography friends comes from the video world and doesn't get lighting ratios for photographic portraits at all. He seems to want to light everything in a 1:1 ratio or, at worst (best?) a 2:1 ratio. I don't know why this is but it's his "style." I guess I should be sending the relentlessly high key clients to him...

This (above) is my current lighting style though I have switched to a darker shade of seamless in the background. 

It is done with a soft-boxed light on the right of the frame (even though I usually and compulsively light from the left), a light in a small soft box aimed at the background and a small LED panel above and behind the subject's head as a hair light. I'm always willing to forego the hair light if there's enough contrast between the person's hair and the background. 

The set up is simple and fast. If you or your clients prefer a softer ratio between the main light and the shadows it's easy enough to put a white reflector on a light stand and vary the distance from the shadow side of the face to the reflector until you get the ratio you want. If you need something approaching 1:1 you'll need to add another light source. I rarely ever go there but when I do I use that fill light source directly above the camera position and try never to go beyond a 3:1 ratio. It just looks better to me.

Since I've been shooting with 47+ megapixel cameras I've found that it's delightful to shoot with the camera in a horizontal orientation. I always got a bit frustrated with the weight of a bigger lens pulling a vertically oriented camera around the tripod screw and having the lens droop towards the floor. I like the horizontal format and figure that, if the client really wants a vertical, there is more than enough resolution to crop. 

Lately, with the ease of shooting and post processing 1:1 images with the Leica SL2, I've been shooting all my newest portraits in a square format. Lightroom reads the aspect ratio data embedded in the raw frame and the files show up as squares in the program. The thing I have to keep reminding myself of is the need to crop less tightly in the square. I have to remember to leave enough room in order to make good crops in either vertical or horizontal. Unless I'm shooting just for myself, in which case the square is the finished product. 

On to the raccoons. 

Yesterday evening the service we hired to remove the raccoons came by and put a rag, soaked in coyote urine (I wonder where one buys that...?) into a wire mesh tube, tied it to a stout string and lowered it down the chimney of our house where it settled on top of the fireplace damper. Right where the raccoons have set up camp. The mother hissed at the new package and all the kits made noise. 

This morning the chimney has been absolutely silent. Whether they have already left or not is still up in the air. Being ever optimistic I think they had enough of the coyote smell and left under cover of the night. The most sage and experienced experts (to whom I will listen) tell me that it takes a couple days for the mother raccoon to go out and secure a new place. Then, maybe, another night to move the family. They'll be by on Thursday to check for the signs.

I feel like a bad host to have ejected the baby raccoons without any due process but there it is. 

Once we have confirmation that they've left a crew will come over and secure the chimney against future ingress. They'll also give the house a careful inspection to see if there are any other potential weak points that can be hardened against future intrusion. 

And that's where we are right now. 

I suggested to my spouse of 36 years that we abandon the house and turn it into a raccoon refuge. She has referred me to a specialist. (kidding, just kidding). But she was emphatic in declining my (whimsical) plan. A dream of paying it forward to the raccoons ---- dashed. 

Apropos of yesterday's article about the world economy....

 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 don't want to intrude on Michael Johnston's territory but can we change gears and talk about cars for one post?

Getting from rest stop to rest stop in the wilds of west Texas.

 I've usually bought new cars and driven them for a good long while. Most of the them last me up to about 100,000 miles. I do the recommended maintenance and try to keep them from getting too scuffed up. I know there is a school of thought that recommends driving them until they fall apart around you as a way of maximizing your "investment" in a car but since I use my vehicle to get to and from jobs reliability is a big issue for me and I find that 100K mark is where all the sub systems start to go south. 

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?

Why the Leica SL is more fun than the SL2.

 There are two reasons I like playing with the Leica SL more than the SL2. The first is that none of the buttons on the back of the camera, with the exception of the on-and-off switch, are labeled. It's an "art" thing and not a performance parameter. I like the way it looks and I've quickly figured out what the buttons do and where they take you when you do either a long or a short press. I re-programmed one dial to reverse the direction of the aperture control but everything else is just as it comes from the factory. The guys who programmed the camera actually gave a lot of rational thought as regards how some people operate their cameras. Their presumptions match mine pretty well. No button labels is fine because there are only four buttons to choose from. Not having more function buttons means not having to think about taking advantage of more buttons. Easier to remember the functionality of four buttons than seven or more buttons which have white type on them but can be changed to be something else. Now that's confusing.

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. 

Drive or fly? Drive or fly? What's the right calculation?

 In days of yore I had a radius from Austin beyond which I would not drive on an assignment. Every once in a great while I broke the rule and drove a bit further away but those were usually when an assignment called for more gear than one could safely and economically transport on a commercial airline. For example, jobs that called for: lots of big strobes, lots of large lighting gear, huge scrims and lots of redundant cameras and lenses. For the most part my boundaries equal the distance and time to drive between Austin and Dallas. 

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. 

A review of a recently unearthed 35mm lens that I have re-evlauated and added back into active service.

 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.

Photo taken with the Leica SL and the Sigma 45mm f2.8. 

mmmmmm. Donuts.

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.

There is always something affecting the worldwide camera market. Will it be the shortage of semiconductors this time?

One of Kirk's chip die photos done for Motorola back when they were all about 

semiconductor production and had large fabs working around the clock in 

Austin, Texas to supply all kinds of industries.

 There are two scenarios that give me pause right now. Both are related to the production of high tech gadgets as well as mission critical tools like cameras. One is a world wide shortage of many different kinds of micro processors, micro controllers and various other families of semi-conductors. Ford and GM have both announced slowdowns in production of new vehicles because they are unable to source the semiconductor parts they need to complete vehicles. It's only a matter of time before the same shortages hit Tesla, Dell and Apple. I presume the short supply is already affecting high end camera production which is largely about assembling silicon parts together with a lens 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. 

The Hot Pursuit of Excellence or the careful testing and adaptation to what you already own?

I recently went through the exercise of trying to decide if it was worth it to me to buy a new zoom lens. My foray into Leica SL cameras started pushing the buttons of avarice in relation to that company's one and only standard, SL zoom lens; the 24-90mm f2.8-4.0. At a lusty $5500 even the most spendthrift among us might take pause and at least investigate to see if there are more rational options. 

Of course, the obvious choice is the lens sitting on my desk and currently muttering derisive remarks about my lack of credit given to its exemplary performance. That lens would be the very, very good Panasonic Lumix 24-105mm f4.0. I've used it over and over again and have always been happy and satisfied with the final results but the powerful lure of Leica legend always makes me wonder if their lens will supply just that tiny bit more "edge" or "magic" that will elevate images and make each image sweeter. 

It's interesting that I find myself so interested in the cameras and lenses at a time when there are still so few real opportunities to push the creative envelope and do the kind of work that might elevate a great lens above a pile of really, really good lenses. But as I've read recently so much of our feelings of boredom, lethargy and lack of initiative are a direct result of our feelings of lack of control. We're not completely in charge of our ability to go to the places we want to go or to photograph the people we want to photograph in the same way we did before the pandemic hit. This translates directly into our feeling as though certain potentials of control have been taken from us. 

On a whim I bought an older, 28-70mm f3.5-4.5 Leica Vario Elmar-R lens. It is well used and the built-in lens hood is floppy and rattles. I wondered if I could get some of the character that gets credited to Leica lenses in general with this lens. The price was too good to pass up so I added it to the collection and bought an "URTH" brand adapter to mate it to the SL body. 

It's interesting to research some of these lenses and learn just how intertwined camera makers and other brand lens makers were (are?) intertwined. This particular lens is a re-badge of a Sigma lens from the early 1990s. Leica's input apparently extended only to the cosmetics of the exterior design but didn't involve any optical design input. Perhaps the lens coatings are different from the Sigma version but that's just conjecture on my part. So, essentially you are putting an older lens from what was at the time a very second tier lens maker on the front of a much more modern and capable camera. What could go wrong? 

Apparently this lens suffers from mediocre build quality and that's evident in the floppy, built-in lens hood. At some point Leica decided to find a company that might do a better job with the basic lens construction so they partnered with Kyocera and also took a more direct hand in the mechanical build quality; but the optical design stayed the same. The newer version is NOT the version I have....

I got tired of the lens hood self-retracting and rattling around so I extended it to its full position and gaffer taped it there. Then I went out and shot with it. One thing you can say about the lens is that it appears very sharp and contrasty in the middle of the frame. Another thing you can say about the lens is that the geometric distortion at the edges of the frame is very, very high at 28mm and vacillates all through the focal length range. Ending up with above average pin cushion distortion at the long end. 

And, in my first tests I found the lens to have oddly manifested vignetting. With extremely dark corners that were hard to correct; if they could be corrected at all. I compared it with the Lumix 24-105 and found the later to be so much better. So I stuck the older lens in a drawer and ignored it for a while. 

But at some point this last week I woke up in the middle of the night and wrote down, on a small sketch pad, "faulty hood." and went right back to sleep. Yesterday I re-visited the 28-70mm and also looked around the web at the very few samples I could find from this lens. I wondered if my middle of the night writing was somehow intuiting the issue. I took off all the tape and pulled the lens hood into its fully retracted position and re-taped it there. I took some shots around the house and noticed that the aberrant vignetting had vanished. There was still the usual vignetting of a lens of this type, and it becomes more apparent it a time when most new lenses are corrected for vignetting in the camera software. But it was nothing like the bizarre vignetting I was experiencing before. 

I decided, after photographing several lawyers during the work day, to go back to the downtown area and take some test shots with the newly "modified" 28-70mm lens. At the end of my experiment I found that the lens still distorts like crazy --- but I never expected that to change. It's pretty easy to correct in post processing so I don't worry about it. But I really don't worry about it because it's not a lens I'd chose to use for exacting architecture for clients... The vignetting, however, was massively better and completely correctable in Lightroom. 

I do like the look of the the colors and the acutance of the lens. I understand that it was designed to have more contrast and to only match the needed resolution of film at the time but the impression of sharpness for so much content that hits the web makes this lens seem more modern than it otherwise might be. 

The vignetting clears up almost in a linear progression with stopping down. By f5.6 or f8.0 it's mostly gone and easily manageable with one of the Lightroom sliders. 

To be frank, while I like playing with this small and likable lens it's really the great performance of the 24-105 Panasonic lens that quells my desire for the big, fat and pricey Leica lens. If I'm honest with myself there's probably never a use case which would dictate that I need the Leica lens. I can't think that any client would see a demonstrable difference between the Leica and the Lumix in real world use. But the expensive lens and all its promise hovers around in an orbit just on the edge of my consciousness, waiting for a moment of weakness, a glitch in my fiduciary logic, to pounce and ingratiate itself into my camera system like an invasive species of bamboo. 

Till then, I guess I'll get along well enough will all the other toys in the collection...

P.S. I thought I should explain the silly and over the top posters below. 

When I was on the 23rd story of a downtown office building photographing an attorney I looked out one of the windows and saw, down on Colorado and Third streets, a big crane with a nine-light (giant cinema fixture) on the front of it and a gaggle of movie grips trying to look cool, professional and on the ball surrounding said crane. I knew they were movie grips because they were busy attaching sheets of color correcting gels to the lighting fixtures. And they had the little, worn grip pouches hanging off their belts. And the production company T-shirts, mostly in black. And the black, cotton baseball caps, ala Ron Howard. 

When I came back downtown to do my lens test with the 28-70mm Leica I walked over to that area and conferred with the intelligence experts out in the field. Those would be the two young guys running the valet parking station across the street. They had the scoop. Austin is currently home to filming the re-boot of "Walker Texas Ranger" and the production company is using a number of downtown locations for the effort. These posters went up on the first day of shooting and are nothing like the usual posters downtown. They are obviously a movie art director's idea of punk rebellion coupled with dated commerce. 

The production had also taken over on the store fronts on Third St. and created a canopied entry for a fake business. On every corner was a large grip truck with grips hanging out smoking and desperately trying to look like the prevailing stereotype of a movie crew. I thought the posters were funny and photographed them. Nobody seemed to mind me being in their (temporary) space. It's almost always interesting...