It's just an ISO 5000 day. Interesting noise with the Leica CL....

 Leica CL + Sigma 56mm f1.4 lens. ISO 5,000. 

Some thoughts about the Panasonic G9 in mid-2022.

 

Panasonic G9 + Leica 15mm 

I realized yesterday when looking at images from the GH6 and then comparing them to images I'd shot back in 2018 with the Panasonic G9 that the older camera is quite unfairly overlooked by people interested in shooting great images with micro four thirds cameras. We tend to be attracted to the idea of "newest."

There are specific areas in which the more powerful image processing electronics of the newest cameras offer image improvements but these are mostly in the realm of high ISO noise reduction and speed. When used at ISOs from 200-1200 and in good light the differences between a four year old camera and a brand new one are not particularly noticeable. In my experience the quality of lenses being used is a much bigger and more obvious determiner of a system's overall performance. 

While the GH6 touts spectacular image stabilization numbers the G9 is certainly no slouch in that regard and my experience of having shot tens of thousands of landscape, street, people and event photographs with the G9 convince me that its image stabilization is still among the top tier of cameras. 

The G9 was the first of the Panasonic cameras I'm aware of to use the current color science tweaks that come standard on the full frame S series cameras as well as on the GH5ii and the GH6 so it's more or less current in that regard. It's in line with Panasonic's current and much improved ways of handling Jpeg files.

When it comes to video Panasonic's consumer friendly and consistent firmware upgrades raised the performance of the G9 to a more professional level about two years ago. It's now capable of shooting 4K video with 10 bits and generating very competitive video files. It was always capable of using the DMW-XLR-1 audio interface from its inception and able to grab good audio. (with the right microphones..) I remembered this incorrectly!!! It looks like the camera doesn't have the smart interface in the hot shoe needed. My apologies for inaccuracy. It's the first time that's ever happened at VSL 😆

My regard for that camera as a video camera is also high. I had other cameras at my disposal for a large project we did over the course of several weeks back in 2020 but chose to use the G9 because it was up to the imaging challenge and was by far the best choice for use on a gimbal. Since 80-90% of that project was done with a gimbal-mounted camera the smaller size, deeper focus and long battery life seemed essential for a good outcome. And the resulting files looked great. 

While one might think that camera makers can now turn out great products without exception it doesn't really work out that way in the "real world." Every once in a while a camera maker gets everything just right. Or at least most things just right. It seems to be the exception rather than the rule. 

Sure. For the most part everyone gets the sensor and internal electronics to work well enough but there is still an art to the exterior design and the usability of a camera in the field. Some cameras seems to check all the boxes but feel sterile and boring in daily use. Some are designed for someone else's hands but not mine. Some get right up to the line of near perfection only to be laid low by one glaring fault or another. Example: I'd love to have a Sony RX-1Rii but the idea of spending three grand for a camera the battery capacity of which is measured in gnat minutes is too far beyond the pale. Even for me. 

Which brings me right back to the G9. It's a small and light body which feels at the same time dense and comfortable. It's got (relatively speaking) a huge battery that lasts a long time. The physical controls are well laid out and always seem to be exactly where I'd like them to be. And the sound of the shutter is very satisfying. When you add in the great imaging performance for many uses the overall potential of the camera is amazing...in the right hands.

If you want to enter the m4:3 world of cameras but also need to stick to a budget this camera would be my first choice every time. If your budget allows for more it seems a better tactic to buy two G9s instead of one GH6 so you have a perfect back up or, if you are a prime lens enthusiast you can shoot different lenses on two different cameras and not hassle with the perils of changing lenses in the middle of a dust storm, high winds, kinetic situation, etc. Hard to change lenses while crossing a rope bridge in a blizzard...

When I traveled to Iceland in 2018 I carried two of the G9s and an assortment of lenses. My most used lens was the Olympus 12-100mm Pro which worked perfectly on the G9. A surprise favorite was the 15mm Panasonic/Leica lens. And the 25mm Summilux (first version) was also most welcome. The final lens that I included was the 8-18mm which was perfect for all those shots that were just begging for the correct wide angle focal length. 

Everything fit nicely in one small backpack and everything worked well despite cold, sleet, rain and more rain. 

I'm happy to see that the G9 is still available and seems to be selling as well as ever. If I were to travel the world to take only photographs and needed a reliable system the G9 and a very few carefully selected lenses might just be my first choice.  Just thought about this while swimming this morning and thought it might be helpful to share. 

G9 + Olympus 12-100mm 

Iceland.

We've got our first 1,500 photographs on the GH6 and a two day corporate job in the can. Now I feel like I can say a few things about the new camera...

Disclaimer. The images here are casual shots from this afternoon's walk around town. They are not meant to be definitive samples from the absolute cutting edge of the GH6's performance envelope. Nor are they destined for the portfolio. They were shot solely for the fun of photographing and also to have content with which to check out how well the raw files work with the new Adobe Camera Raw converter. If you don't like the images I suggest you ignore them and just read the text...

And just like that, all of a sudden, I'm back into the micro four thirds fan club. I bought a GH5ii to use as a "B" camera for video with the Panasonic S5 and liked it so much I just had to grab the GH6 when it came out. And, yeah, a few lenses as well. My intention was to make good use of the smaller sensor system for video jobs but I couldn't resist the implicit challenge so when a nice, multi-day assignment for a fun high tech company rolled around on the calendar I packed the two GHx cameras along with the S5 and drove off to a Hyatt resort property to ply my trade. 

I am blessed to have wonderful clients. The event director for this particular client is a person I have worked with now for at least two decades. She gives me a vague brief and an agenda, and a lot of leeway, and I more or less shoot according to a pattern we established many years ago while photographing for Motorola.  If it's interesting to me I photograph it. If it's not interesting to me and I don't think the client will really use the image I pass it by. 

While the resort hosting the two day conference is just 22 miles from my front door the client arranged for a nice hotel room at the resort for my convenience. It beats having to drive home in the evening and then fight rush hour traffic to get back the next morning. And the Hyatt did a very nice job with this particular property.

There was nothing during the course of the job that was rushed or anxiety provoking and if I missed a shot of a speaker or presenter I had plenty of opportunities to get a better photograph moments later. The nature of a job like this is to do a very nice documentation of each speaker, get plenty of images of audience response, cover the social aspects like dinners and happy hours and snap away during team building exercises. The event covered sensitive internal information and since I was working with an NDA in place I can't discuss the content or the name of the company. "I will neither confirm nor deny the identity of my temporary benefactor..." 

I came to the job prepared to test cameras as a pastime and an exercise in sessions where the same speaker was on stage for an hour or so at a time. It's pretty easy to get a good range of speaker photos in the first 20 minutes or so of a presentation, easy enough to get a good and diverse range of audience reaction shots in the next 20 minutes so it seems efficient and reasonable to spend the rest of the time checking in to see just how good the higher ISO settings are on the GH6, how well it handles color in mixed light, how good the image stabilization is with and without dual stabilized lenses, how the new camera compares with the GH5ii and how those two cameras compare with the Panasonic S5. Right?  Otherwise there's just the temptation to graze the pastries and the coffee bar...

But before we hop into any details I should let you know that the raw file converter in the Adobe imaging programs is now fully working with the GH6 raw files. Hooray. Nice. I missed that window (being able to shoot and process raw) for the event but I was pretty much planning to shoot Jpegs anyway. I shot all of these images in this blog post in raw and played around with them in Lightroom Classic. I pushed, I pulled, I tried to "break" the files but the conversions are pretty solid and I can't see any big gotchas. Granted, I haven't tried the converter with the HHHR settings (hand held high res) yet so this isn't the deepest dive but if you shoot like a normal photographer I think you'll be happy with your results. 

The first half of the first day on the job was spent in a medium sized ball room. Big enough to comfortably hold about 90 people and equipped with a custom designed stage set. I thought I'd be fine with the 12-60mm f2.8-4.0 Leica zoom for the GH6 but I misjudged. I guess my brain was rusty from a couple years of not shooting in-person events... Sure, most of the stuff I was shooting fit into that focal range but more than once I wanted to be a lot tighter on the speaker on the stage but without walking right up to the front of the house. Normally, I'm comfortable with something like a 70-200mm on a full frame camera. But I didn't even bring one of those along for the S5. I was too optimistic about the elasticity of the long, normal zooms. The longest lens I brought for the S5 was the Panasonic 24-105. 

When I really, really wanted to get tighter I made use of the incorporated "teleconverter" setting in each of the cameras. It required dropping the resolution of the cameras to 12.5 megapixels but I like that better than having to labor over cropping each image in post production. 

I tried to lean heavily on the GH6 because it was the newest toy. I photographed at ISOs as high as 6400 but tried valiantly not to go higher than ISO 4,000 if I could. The files looked great. I stayed above 1/125th of second for my shutter speed and had no concerns about using any of the lenses (except one) wide open. So, ISO 4000 is totally usable and ISO 3200 is surprisingly clean. And happily the noise reduction isn't making a mess of the details in the process. Eyelashes and fabric weave were sharp and detailed. The finder in the GH6 is bright and clean and matches the rear screen for exposure appearance which is a nice plus. 

When I used the 12-60mm lens I was able to take advantage of the dual image stabilization feature of the Panasonic cameras. Same with the 24-105mm lens on the S5. With both of these combos you can basically do away with having to use a tripod. This is probably the first time in, well, forever that I did not even pack a tripod for the job. Left them all at home. The problem with depending on either a tripod or great image stabilization when shooting action on a stage is that the real problem is never camera shake. The real problem is subject motion and that isn't fixed by better and better image stabilization or a good tripod but is only cured by raising the shutter speed past a threshold where you are able to freeze human motion. 

I am declaring right now that I am a new convert to the use of one customized function button but it's pretty specific to this job and I was pushed to pursue this option because I had too much hubris to bring the long lens I really needed. There is a function button I can reach on the front of the cameras, just to the right of the lens, with with right hand. I dedicated that button to switching the digital teleconverter on or off. In order to make it all work you have to make sure to switch the resolution at the same time. If you have the res set to 24 megapixels you always end up with the full frame. If you remember to set the res to 12.5 megapixels you get a nice 1.5X crop. It helps you dig in and get a tighter frame when you want one. 

The GH6 is very much aimed at videographers and that's why there is a built-in fan. You can turn it off when photographing but I never bothered to change the "auto" setting in the menu. But even when we were outside on Tuesday afternoon, wallowing around in the 94° direct sun, I was never able to hear the fan and it didn't seem to have much effect on the battery life either. 

1500 to 2000 frames is just about enough to start getting conversant with a new camera. I kind of cheated this time by preemptively picking up the GH5ii a couple months in advance. They share about 90% of the menu and neither of their menus are much different from that of the S5. The menus are logical and well laid out and if you are hazy on what a menu item does you can always push the "disp" button to see a little window with a terse explanation. Nice. 

With all the cameras set manually for white balance and exposure, as well as the same color profile settings, all of the Jpeg files were obviously of the same color family. No bad surprises there. If you just have to rank the cameras in terms of absolute quality you'll find that the S5 is the best for high ISO noise, followed at about a stop and a half behind by the GH6, followed at about a stop behind by the GH5ii. In terms of my latest metric: "Joy of camera handling" I found the GH6 to be perfect, the GH5ii to be perfect minus three percent and the S5 to be perfect minus 5.5%. The real surprise is something that shouldn't surprise anyone who reads the specs but the EVF in the GH6 is just much nicer than the lower resolution finder in the S5. I don't really see much difference in finder quality between the two GHx cameras but if you are one of those people who needs a more perfect finder you might find yourself trading off the lure of full frame for the actual performance of the GH6's finder image. 

Since all of the GH6 files were shot at or above ISO 800 (indoors) the vaunted dynamic range boost should have been automatically activated. But I have to say that all three of the cameras have good, long ranging Jpeg files at default. I didn't notice much difference but I did find that I could push the GH6 Jpeg files much more than I was ever able to with the GH5 cameras. At least when it comes to effective and non-intrusive use of the shadow slider in post production. 

There were two lenses that I brought along for the m4:3 systems that I didn't think I would get much use out of but which turned out to be my favorites of the two days of shooting. One was the Leica Summilux 25mm f1.4 ii and the other was the cheap, fun, solid, sharp, wacky TTArtisan 50mm f1.2. I used the 25mm for all the quick paced social photography at our happy hours and extended meals. It locked focus quickly and let me work the crowd with a small package and good results. 

The 50mm TTartisan isn't a lens I'd pick for close, fast work but when people are in their seats in their conference mode and I can take my time to finesse the focus I found shooting the 50mm TTartisan lens to be addictive. I used it mostly at f1.4 to f2.5 and almost always for loose head and shoulders candids such as when people would pick up a table microphone to ask a question or to respond to a query. Used within a five or six foot range at the wider apertures gets you a very nice and mellow out of focus background with a high degree of apparent sharpness at the plane of accurate focus. It's nice. It's kind of old school but nice. And keep in mind that this effect is with a "cropped" frame camera system.

My keeper rate with that lens was somewhere around 60% but as I mentioned before if I didn't get it on the first frame I had all the time in the world to correct and try again. It's a darn narrow slice of in focus real estate. 

If you've worked with a GH5 you'll find the battery life in the GH5ii and GH6 is about the same. I tended to keep the cameras switched on and I chimped a lot on the 50mm shots so I was only able to get through about half a day with the first battery and found myself reaching for the battery in my pocket when I still had two bars left on the little battery symbol. I brought a big Anker battery bank along as well as a couple of chargers so when I wasn't using a camera I could either pull the battery and put it on the charger or just plug the USB 3.1 plug between the Anker bank and the camera's USB 3.1 plug and charge the battery in camera. Nice to have PD (power delivery) in the big batteries. I'd circle back to the charging camera an hour later to find its battery nearly topped up. 

The obvious benefit of the smaller format system is in the smaller size and lower weight of the lenses. I think the GH6 actually weighs more than the S5 but when it comes to lenses it's at least a 2X or more difference...and not in the favor of the full frame camera system. Another lesser benefit is the increased depth of field for a given angle of view. A little safety margin for the sloppy photographer...

I found the image quality of the GH6 to be a big leap forward in overall image quality from my previous use of GHx cameras. The G9 seems to be the bridge between the two generations and I find the color and quality from that camera to be nearly as good. Where the G9 gives up a bit of ground is in the high ISO/noise realm but really, it's not a big leap. Even between a G9 and a full framer. If you have to have nose bleed high ISO performance you'll need to go full frame but for so much every day photography the three way gap between formats, ISOs and the final targeted use is much less obvious than most people think. If you are aiming at the web and you have good technical skills you can probably make images from any  of the systems that are indistinguishable from each other. 

I just realized that the real allure of the GH6 is fun. Just good, plain fun. 

Speaking of fun... We are celebrating our 37th wedding anniversary this week. I'm so lucky to have found someone who is much smarter and nicer than me. Thankfully she has a blind spot where I am concerned and seems oblivious to my many faults. My only advice to the young and unmarried... "Always marry someone smarter than yourself." You'll thank yourself for it in the long run.

Now planning which cameras and lenses to bring along for my banker conference in Santa Fe in a couple of weeks. I'm on pins and needles to see what I pick out for that adventure. We'll see.

 

Yes. Strange but true. We were able to make decent photographs with older gear. In fact, maybe better.....

that's Ben in the lead (above) during a high school cross country meet, back in the day. He still runs nearly every day. I photographed this race for fun with a Canon 1D mark 2 N camera and the Canon 70-200mm f4.0 L lens. Even though neither product is a Sony and both were made over a decade ago I was able to focusing on people running, get the exposure correct and subsequently print the image as large as 16 by 24 inches. I know that will sound unbelievable to those who feel that having the most current camera gear is essential...

The story of the image below is equally a stretch for gear junkies. Strange as it may seem I took this image with a camera from a line of cameras that has been totally discontinued. Lens now orphaned. A relic of the dark past of digital imaging. The photo was taken nearly ten years ago, unposed, with a Sony a99 camera and the Sony 70-200mm f2.8 lens for the "a" mount Sony cameras. I expected it to be a soft, grainy mess but here we are. Sharp enough, perfectly exposed and used many times over in the theatre's marketing. 

All from cameras that have been long since relegated to the junk pile of photographic gear.....

Ah well. Just reminiscing. Click either image to see it larger.

 

Spring time. Dinner parties. Weird flashes. Fun stuff.

 

It's been a crazy Spring. I'm getting busy again with work but we've also spent a lot of time doing some renovations to the house. After a few weird cold snaps we decided that we needed to replace all the old, crappy, drafty single pane windows around the house with really nice, well sealed, double pane, UV shielded windows. Pricy but we hope the reduction in utility bills (and our home's carbon footprint) is worth it. Certainly there is a much more even temperature consistency throughout the house and it's much better at resisting the intrusion of outside noise. Then there are the new skylights for the back porch which make it very welcoming for those two or three weeks a year of mild temperatures here in Cen-Tex. We've had two dinner parties out on the porch this week alone. Trying to make the most of the current mild-to-cool temperatures and the comfortable breezes. 

We put flowers around the house but every time we host a dinner our guests bring endless flowers. The living room and dining rooms look like a florist's shop. I'm documenting the daily droop and decline of the tulips just above... When all the cut flowers die we know it's time for another dinner party...

We've had some zany weather this Spring but for the most part it's been cooler and drier than usual. We've left windows open and we aren't being attached by mosquitos out in the yard as badly this time around. The trees are now in full bloom and the whole neighborhood is awash in green. Even our small, red-leaf Japanese maple is coming along nicely. But we're at the point where we're  hoping for rain.

A friend brought over some Meyer lemons and I think B is working up a dessert recipe that incorporates them. I thought they were just a photographic prop but got schooled about that. Still, if you're going to wrap bright yellow lemons in a deep purple cloth I think the idea that they are prop-worthy is reasonable. 

I did three different portrait jobs this week and the connective tissue between the three projects was my use of what I consider "eccentric" flash equipment. 

The three flashes just above are Godox AD200 and AD200 Pro flashes. They are powered by batteries and can belt out between 400 and 500 full power flashes at 200 watt seconds on a charge. They have interchangeable flash heads. The one on the right is wearing a round head and that head incorporates an LED modeling light that has three power levels and stays lit for a half hour. At the highest modeling light power setting it's very functional for studio work. The two on the left are shown with accessory reflectors over bare bulb tubes but I can interchange to a standard, rectangular flash head as well. When used with dedicated radio triggers they can be controlled in both manual and TTL modes and the triggers offer five different channels to control five different groups of flashes. 

I originally bought two of these to do a job with back in 2018 because they packed down small for air travel and they were great to use in the field when no other electricity was available. I destroyed one with an unintentional experiment in durability. A wind gust lured a flash down from a ten foot high light stand to the hard ground almost instantaneously and it was too much for the unit to handle. I recently replaced the dead unit with an updated AD200 Pro unit and then, in a fit of pre-planning, bought one more to make a complete, three light portrait system that can fit in a large camera bag. 

The unit on the right is in a silicon sleeve mostly to protect the rear screen of the unit which has proven to be the most vulnerable area on the flash. The two flashes on the left are protected by silicon protectors that just cover the bottom third of the flash unit (again, protecting the weak spot) but are easier to remove for packing. 

I love using these lights for portrait work and have gotten very comfortable with them. I'll use one in a big modifier, like a 60" umbrella, as a main light, one unit, somewhat diffused and aimed at the background and the third in a small soft box as a back light/hair light. I have a larger A/C powered monolight but only end up using it these days on jobs that go on and on through a working day. Sometimes having an endless source of power and a very bright modeling light make work easier and quicker. But I love not having cables running across the floor.

The trigger shown here (just above) is an older product called a Godox X1-T. I can program it to work fully manually with the Leica stuff. The only thing it will do is manual flash, triggered via the center pin of the hot shoe, but it can also change the levels of all channels of the flash from the camera position. It won't grant me TTL capabilities and that's the way I prefer to use the system. I'd rather be in total control of the camera and flashes. 

I have a nearly identical trigger that's dedicated for Olympus and Panasonic cameras. I use that one in manual as well but if I ever get adventurous I can use the whole system in TTL mode and even use the HSS flash mode. 

I'll be using two of the flashes and a trigger later this week to photograph a corporate group shot outside. With 40 people in the shot they won't by any stretch of the imagination overwhelm the full sun but they will add a bit of frontal fill light. And I can always pray for high soft clouds...

I have fun stuff on tap for the rest of the month. There is a corporate leadership event this coming week. I'll spend half the week at a nice resort photographing meetings, team building and general socializing. It's the perfect chance to test out a hybrid combination of Panasonic S5 cameras with the new GH6 and GH5ii cameras. All of which share the same batteries and the same flash dedication.

After I wrap that project I have a full week booked for a banking conference in Santa Fe at the end of the month. My plan is to make that event an "All Leica" event with the SL2 backed up by an SL and supplemented by the CL and a fun selection of lenses. 

It's kind of exhilarating to have a month of bookings that will yield the kind of income (and fun) the business was generating before the Covid shutdowns. I had almost forgotten how much fun it can be to stay in really nice hotels, have really nice dinners and lunches and to document interesting speakers and panels. All in a very cool town.  Nice to be back in the saddle. 

More about the upcoming work in a future blog.

One or two gear notes. I've been working through a backlog of files I shot with the Leica CL and two lenses that are quickly becoming my favorites for that sub-system. Those are both Sigma Contemporary series lenses. Specifically the 18-50mm f2.8 and the 56mm f1.4. Both are extremely sharp and contrasty through their ranges and both are small and lightweight. Finally, comparatively speaking, they are dirt cheap. 

They interface seamlessly with the little APS-C Leica and give me a great walk around camera to use for my personal work but also as a supplement to projects on which I'm mostly shooting full frame, L series cameras. The CL uses the same lens mount as the big SL2 and also the whole family of Panasonic S series, full frame cameras. For large parts of my corporate jobs I can use the CL and the 18-50mm by themselves and cover what I need to without much operational friction at all. 

From what I can divine from the marketplace the CL is more or less discontinued and won't be replaced. I guess it makes more sense for Leica to concentrate on the bigger L mount stuff and their bread and butter M series stuff but I find there is a lot to like with the smaller camera and a range of small but highly competent lenses.  Your mileage will almost certainly diverge.

Swimming. I made it to swim practice this past Thursday at noon. For some reason it was a lightly attended practice. What do I mean by "lightly attended"? Well, there was me. And there was the coach. And the pool. My choice of all eight lanes. I took advantage of the situation to ask my coach ( Clark Smith, Olympic Gold Medalist at Rio de Janeiro, simultaneous NCAA record holder in the 500, 1000 and 1650 distances in his time at UT Austin) for a little advice on improving my freestyle stroke. He had me work on my (miserable) freestyle arm recovery, recommending a much higher elbow position and a more relax entry at the front end of the stroke. I noticed today that I swim about 5 seconds per hundred faster as a result all while clocking a 10 beat per second slower heart rate. Wow. That's a huge improvement from one session. 

The workout this morning was much better attended with four and five people to a lane. We blazed through the yardage even though Sunday's are usually less serious workout days. My lane logged about 3300 yards over the course of our hour practice. And the weather was perfect. 

It's exhilarating fun to actually be able to improve on technique at 66. If you want to you never have to stop learning and improving. That makes life fun for me. Oh, and dinner parties....

Walking around SXSW with a CL and the 56mm f1.4 Sigma. With a few from the 18-50mm f2.8 Sigma. Thoughts on fitting in with the crowd.

Man on a phone.

If years of reading about  "street"  photography on the web have taught me anything (which is debatable) it is that most photographers are frightened and/or uncomfortable photographing strangers who are out in public. If the subject of one's photographic interest is outside of the photographer's own demographic (age, race, economic strata, etc.) it seems to become even more difficult. This would account for many, many millions of street photographs that only show strangers' backs. 

I find that the best documentarians are the ones who shoot the most and who have reconciled themselves to the idea that most of their resistance is self-propelled. Self-inflicted. Or that the photographers make the error of trying to be "outside" of the flow of humanity which they are trying to photograph. They want to stand to one side and shoot images with a long lens. Conflict avoidance taking precedence over access. Being sneaky...

I enjoy crowds of people. Especially when they are out enjoying themselves. When I headed downtown to photograph a bit of Sixth Street SXSW life a few weeks ago I had no qualms whatsoever about diving into the crowds of musicians and music lovers and making images because I saw myself as part of the crowd and not as an external gawker. 

Part of this is a lifetime of experience but some of it is just being comfortable with things that are different. When I was growing up. I spent my second and third grade years ( in the 1960s) in Adana, Turkey. At the time it was the third or fourth largest city on the country. We lived smack in the middle of downtown. We bought candy and sodas from the street vendors, hung out with Turkish kids, got lost in neighborhoods that our parents considered to be dicey. We kids picked up the Turkish language and often visited friends as guests in their schools. When I attended my friend Susan's school from time to time I stuck out like a sore thumb with different clothes, a different haircut and a different complexion. And when I opened my mouth to talk I cinched the idea of "different."

But... I watched what my Turkish friends did and how they played and acted and I adapted to them, and over the course of time learned to fit right in. A smile and a willingness to fit in worked wonders. It's the same now when I'm in downtown Austin. Or San Antonio. Or NYC.  When I am approached by a homeless person I may decide not to give them money but I always stop and listen to their questions and acknowledge them as people. When I meet with my banker downtown I try to fit into his environment as well. When I photograph doctors in my studio I try to find the commonalities of interest we share and make our time photographing a collaboration rather than procedure. And when I walk  through a crowd of young music fans hanging out on Sixth Street I try not to remember that I'm 66 years old, live in Austin's most affluent neighborhood and am a quintessential middle class guy. When I am in the crowd I try to embrace my curiosity and give more energy to my desire to fit in by not worrying that I might be the one who is....different. 

If someone shouts at me I don't turn around and scurry away, I walk over to them and talk to them. I show a willingness to engage on whatever level they want to engage. 

One fear I hear a lot from photographers is that they are leery of carrying around thousands of dollars worth of camera gear in crowded, urban environments. They are afraid they will become targets for thieves who will separate them from their Nikons or Leicas or Sonys and leave them feeling victimized. I find this odd since most people these days (and I would conjecture this is true of thieves as well) are over wanting cameras or wanting to carrying them around. A thief might want your wallet; most likely your cash, but I can't think they'd covet an older Leica CL or something like that. But when people spend lots of money on stuff they start to worry about it. It's like turning on an electro-magnet. I guess the more one worries about their gear the more paranoid one gets and that anxiety and chaos is what probably attracts potential predators. It's a toxic reaction to low odds when you consider you'll probably end up buying a new camera next year anyway. 

I remember sitting in a restaurant in Rome across the street from the Borghese Gardens a while back. I had two of the then brand new Mamiya 6 cameras with me. My waiter asked me about the cameras. He was quite knowledgable about them even though they had not, at that point, been introduced into the EU market. He asked if he could hold one of the cameras. I asked if he wanted to take it outside and snap a few images to see how it worked, and to me, more importantly, how the shutter sounded. He was surprised but he took me up on the offer. My lunch companion, a fellow photographer from the U.S. was shocked. "What if he steals your camera?" 

I laughed. The waiter seemed perfectly legit. And why would he risk losing his job over the camera? 

The waiter of course returned minutes later and thanked me for letting him try out the camera. We struck up a conversation and he invited us to dinner at his favorite restaurant. My fellow photographer was nervous and declined but I was thrilled and met the waiter and his wife at their apartment and we walked together through Rome's back streets to the restaurant. It's was a restaurant I've never found in the guide books and it's not on any list of popular restaurants but it was Frederico Fellini's favorite in all of Rome. The walls were covered with signed portraits of Fellini as well as his favorite actors. We had a wonderful dinner. 

Turns out his wife wrote, designed and had published children's books in Italian, Spanish and Portuguese. She gave me a handful to take back home to baby Ben. Turns out the "waiter" studied photography at the Royal Academy in London and was a wonderful large format photographer. He also inherited a family farm in Tuscany where he did photographic workshops. 

How sad if I had allowed fear and paranoia to rob me of a wonderful chance meeting and a new and very talented friend. But all I ever hear from tourists is the overwhelming fear that if they take a nice camera with them to XXXX they will be pick-pocketed, robbed, bushwhacked and leave without their precious stuff. I'm sure everyone has a story about someone they know who has been robbed or lost stuff to larceny when traveling. But I'm equally willing to believe that their own abject paranoia attracted their misfortune in the first place. 

It's no different in crowds in your own town. If you treat everyone as you expect to be treated (assuming you expect to be treated well enough...) you never really attract trouble. Sure, you are always playing the odds. But I'd rather trade off a camera instead of avoiding a life time of fun and interesting experiences. I'm betting you would as well. 

Another man on a phone. 

I don't "hide" my camera at waist level. I don't often prefocus. I pull the camera up to my eye and telegraph my intention to take a photograph. It's the only way I'm really comfortable working. If a person doesn't want to be photographed they'll let you know. Otherwise you smile and continue. And maybe even nod a "thank you" as you pass by. 

Cameras are super valuable targets? Naw. See the sign just above.

Don't buy anything you'd be afraid to take out of the house.

I couldn't decide what expression I liked best on the woman above with the magenta hair. So, instead of "grabbing" a shot and scampering away I stopped and waited and shot and waited and shot again and if someone turned at looked at me I smiled and kept on photographing. That's how I work. 

I like the black and white photo best....

Okay. So I come across a guy getting his hair cut out in the middle of a three lane street in the most popular part of the entertainment district. Should I pretend he doesn't like attention or that he'll leap up from his seat and take umbrage on the photographer? Or should I acknowledge the bizarre nature of the situation and just go with it? That's a rhetorical question....

It goes both ways. I get photographed too.

I get more keepers when I get closer. To get closer you can't fear your fellow 

participants on the street. You acknowledge and document them. You join in the 

shared energy of the moment. 

the fact that everyone is snapping away with the phones has made people less conscious of being photographed. They just roll with it. When someone asks what I'm going to use the photograph for I tell them I might put it up on my blog or on Instagram. And that's the truth. Sometimes, if they are interested, 

I hand a business card with just my Instagram contact on it. Works for them. Works for me. 

 No one brings a ten foot, live snake with them to the bar district unless they want attention. The idea that one would fear snapping the photo is funny. People might be better off if they don't take themselves so seriously. Really.