Same lesson over and over again...

 Like many photographers who are inordinately fond of gear I keep looking for that one perfect lens or camera that will unlock my true photographic potential. Yeah...as if. 

If you read the blog regularly you'll see that I've really tried hard to substitute hardware for talent. Over and over again. But as the old saying goes: "Wherever you go, there you are." Or, in my world: "What ever camera you are shooting with you still have the same photographer." 

In a moment of delusional weakness I actually paid full pop for a Leica 24-90mm zoom lens for the SL system. I thought that this would be the one. But it's big and heavy and a slog to carry around, and when I did finally cart it everywhere with me I found my images to be maybe a bit sharper but by no means any better in terms of insight, impact or overall splendor. It took me decades to stumble into the trap of considering new gear as an important factor in successful imaging and I'm afraid it's also taken me additional decades to figure out (or to admit to my recalcitrant techie self) that all of that motivation to buy new stuff was an error. Not a life or death error but certainly a stumbling block of sorts. 

When you get bit by the acquisition bug you waste a whole lot of time doing mindless comparisons between products which are, for the most part, far better than anyone really needs them to be.  You waste time watching obvious shills for affiliates wax on and on about the "glory" of the latest 35mm lens or the perfect Q2 camera. You waste effort in working for more money only to give up a big part of your profits to buy yet another step "forward." You encounter many opportunity costs. Trading time you could have spent finding a great model, a great location or a great client in exchange for another piece of gear that will eventually, again and again, lay bare that the only important thing is the strength of your ideas and your own concept of a photographic vision. 

Why am I beating this dead horse once again? Hmmm. A few weeks back I came across an older zoom lens that was labeled with a brand badge that marketing people have inflated into an icon in the industry. It was an ancient, heavy, well used Yashica/Contax zoom lens made by Kyocera in Japan, but festooned with the Carl Zeiss branding on the front ring. It was offered used for "only" a couple of hundred dollars. I bought it.  I like it but I don't know why...

I went out shooting some landscapes yesterday and intended to do the whole shoot with my newly acquired Sigma 35mm lens just to see how that would work out. But, as an afterthought I put the Yashica/Contax zoom in the backpack and brought it along. After a few preliminary shots I got bored sticking with one focal length so I pulled out the big zoom lens. The Contax-to L-mount adapter makes it look even bigger than it really is. I added a cheap, rubber lens hood for some protection against flare. 

The rest of my time spent on the hot rocks was occupied shooting with the big, old zoom. It's a bear to shoot. It's used in "stop down" mode exclusively so you have the choice of slowing way down and opening the aperture to its maximum in order to fine focus. If you are shooting at f8 or f11 the depth of field delivered to the finder makes fine focusing hard. Really hard. Couple that with a "one touch" zoom mechanism and you'll really have to work to get stuff in focus and ready to shoot. It's hardly a quick process...

With the current Leica zoom lens all of this gets handled by the camera. No user sweat is involved in getting stuff in focus. 

But here's the deal, the $250 used lens was perfectly adequate for the photographs I had in mind out in the field. The reality is that we're mostly using the lenses at something like f5.6 or, even more likely, f8-f11 and at those middle apertures each lens is delivering image quality to the camera sensor that is more or less identical. Which, once you've spent five or six thousand dollars on a different lens is something that's hard to admit. Especially to such a critical audience as yourself.

It's a bit unreal to come to grips with the fact that you've duped yourself into believing that a specific piece of gear can be so, so, so important to a process that you can rationalize spending a fortune on a lens that you end up rarely using. Which also brings up the question of why I chose to drag along an older and supposedly less capable lens instead of instantly reaching for the penultimate lens in the collection. 

And I think, after pondering this last night, the reality is that working harder at making an image seems to be more fun than working less hard and letting the camera and lens do the heavy lifting for you. When I saw the image I'm sharing at the top of this post I also realized just how much post processing has to do with the success or failure of an image, tech-wise. The image is enhanced with a Leica SL2 preset I got from The Leica Store Miami and parts of the image have been selectively subjected to the clarity slider or have saturation of certain colors enhanced. 

That the $250 lens can make a file that can be quickly and easily post processed to equal the output from a much more expensive lens is deflating and basically delivers us back to the the same old story: It's not about the lens. It's not the camera. There is no "better" brand. There is no special sauce. It's all up to me. Or all up to you, or all up to whoever is out photographing. If we point the world's best camera and lens at something boring you get a nice, but basically boring photograph. Point decades old gear at an exciting subject and you capture the excitement without much (or any) compromise. 

My early work was all about people. As I got older fewer and fewer of my personal photographs have been of young, beautiful people as my age and access marched in reverse ratios to each other in lockstep. And here, now, I have relegated myself to photographing something I have very little interest in --- landscapes. And why? So I can "test" out my camera or my lens and share the results with people I have mostly never met. And who mostly disagree with my assessments.

It's not a very awe inspiring confession. But over the course of the last two decades the world, the universe and all of us have allowed for a near total homogenization of what was once a richly diverse craft to take place. At least where subject matter and style were concerned. Now it feels like we're just going through the steps in order to keep a sidelined hobby alive. Billions of cat whisker photos later...

Sobering. For sure. 

I'm sure I can fix this. At least I think I can. But it's tough if you have to learn the same lessons over and over again until they actually sink in and do some good.

I have moved from the hobby of taking photographs to the hobby of spending money with an almost seamless efficiency. I wish there was someone to blame other than myself. 

But there we are. 

A Quick Portfolio of Landscapes from Pedernales Falls State Park. Sunday, August 7th, 2022.

A.

We had a break in the heat yesterday and I planned out a quick trip to Pedernales Falls State Park, just 45 miles and change from Austin. I wore lightweight clothes that covered my arms and legs, my newest pair of rattlesnake-proof hiking boots, a good hat and some fingerless gloves. I scrambled on the rocks and up the side of house-sized boulders until I ran out of water in both the 32 ounce bottle and the 16 ounce bottles I'd packed in my small backpack. Then I called it quits and headed home. Didn't want to take too many chances...

The park was largely empty today. No good running water for swimming and way too hot for most families.

A great opportunity for uncrowded landscape photography. Something I rarely do but sometimes enjoy.

I mostly used the old Y/C Carl Zeiss, Contax 35-135mm zoom lens, a few with the new Sigma 35mm f2.0 and all with the Leica SL2. Everything raw and then converted for the portfolio in Lightroom Classic.

Hope it rains soon. Hate to see the falls drying out. Photo of the photographer at the end.....

Watch: Seiko Kinetic. 

A self-winding automatic quartz. 

Weird? Yeah.

I took their advice and avoided hiking at noon. I started a bit closer to one.

A quick vacation to Pedernales Falls State Park. Landscapes with the Carl Zeiss 35-135mm lens.

 Pedernales Falls State Park.

Just a break from the usual cabin fever/downtown walk...

Camera: Leica SL2

Lens: Contax 35-135mm Zoom

Shoes: Hi-Tec Hiking boots. 

Sunscreen by Trader Joe's.

The Amazing and in-depth Summer Hat Photographic Inventory. Complete with "Super" model and "Mega" influencer "Mr. K"...

Ah. The hat inventory. These are just the Summer hats. We don't have enough bandwidth for the Winter hats as well. That will come later. Much later. I keep a collection of hats for a couple of reasons. First off, I carry an extra, inexpensive bucket hat with me when I walk around downtown in the Summer. Sometimes I come across someone working in the sun or walking somewhere without a hat. I offer them the extra one. Secondly, I get bored wearing the same hat every day. An added bonus is that most of these are machine washable so I can toss them in the laundry when they get dirty and know I have lots left to choose from.

I woke up this morning with the idea of doing a silly self-assigned photo essay of me and my hats. I set up a Leica SL2 on a tripod, put a flash trigger on top and then set up a 60 inch octabox with no front diffusion panel. I wanted big but contrasty light. I fired up Leica Fotos, the iPhone app and photographed myself after previewing each set up on my phone. I used the 24-90mm Vario Elmarit lens set to 75mm and got busy. 

The hat above is "lavender" colored and is one of my favorites because it's so lightweight and foldable. I rescued it from the trash at the pool. It looked brand new until I got my hands on it. 

Here's a hat I wear every morning. It's bright yellow. It's my swim cap.

It keeps the chlorine from constantly flowing past my hair. 

It is my secret for keeping my hair absolutely perfect at all times.

I actually hate this hat but I keep it around for all those times when one's hat might

not make it through a project. Like painting the fence. Or bleaching black mold off 

rock walls. Everyone needs one protective "crash" hat. 

A cheap Tilley imitation. Reminds me constantly why I don't have a Tilley hat. 

Or a Billingham camera bag. Or a Jaguar. 

My dad came from a small town in Pennsylvania. He did his undergraduate work at 

Indiana University of Pennsylvania before heading off to Washington University in

St. Louis. When he passed away I ended up with all his alumni swag.

I have a matching t-shirt as well. 

Without a doubt. This lightweight treasure from REI is my favorite bucket hat.

It's very crushable and is a perfect all-arounder. 

Finally. When you are out and about you'll need a dressy Summer hat. 

This one works for that. And at this point the "super" model was getting antsy

and ready to call it a day. Freakin' prima donna.

Got a hat? No? Get a hat.

Even if you have to settle for a Tilley hat.

 

I am becoming my own Cindy Sherman. These are still images from my yet to be made movie. One day people will be able to buy them in a gallery. The payoff will be spectacular.

anonymous urban photographer.

 anonymous artist working in the photographic medium.

The very first lens I ever bought for an interchangeable lens camera. Somewhere back in the 1970s. Still works.

 

Back when I was a poor, poor student I worked part time at a "hi-fi" store that was situated at the bottom of a high rise dormitory just on the edge of the UT campus. The bottom two floors of the building were for retail and restaurants. Across the walk way from our hi-fi shop was Austin's preeminent camera store, Capitol Camera. They had all the good stuff. When I started working in the shop in 1976 everyone around me was also into cameras and photography. Really into it.

I'd been photographing with a Canon G3 QL17 and loved it but the path forward was obviously an SLR with a "real" lens on the front of it. I saved for months and months and bought the least expensive Canon SLR at the time. It was a Canon TX and it came in a kit with that 50mm f1.8 FD lens (above). The camera, lens and I were inseparable. Home-rolled Tri-X film from a bulk loader and a membership to the Ark Cooperative Darkroom rounded out the my early and long initiation into the wonderful world of photography. 

The camera got traded in a long time ago. It was perfectly usable but pretty primitive. The top shutter speed of 1/500th of a second was the sticking point that moved me along to my next camera. I think that one was a Canon EF...

But the lens stayed around. This morning I put it on a cheap adapter and then onto a Leica SL camera. This puts me mostly back into all manual territory but with a few perks. One is that I can use the rig in aperture priority automatic. Another is that I can use auto-ISO. And the best perk is that I can magnify part of the frame for very accurate (manual) focusing. It's important to also know that you are always working in the stopped down mode with these adapted lenses. Whatever aperture is set on the lens is the aperture you are viewing and focusing with. But it's neither an impediment nor a blessing. It just is.

Even though this particular lens is about 46 years old the aperture ring works fine, the blades stop down correctly and the focusing ring is still mostly smooth and still pretty well dampened. The glass is clean and clear and the distance scale, even when the lens is used on an inexpensive adapter, is accurate. 

In our current time when lenses have become huge and everyone seems obsessed with optical perfection it's a wonderful vacation to work with a "lesser" lens. But I don't mean to imply that there's anything wrong with the lens. Just that it only has six elements in five groups, there are only six aperture blades and they are NOT curved for bokeh enhancement. and the lens coatings are primitive when compared to current products. 

If you have an interest in working with a vintage product like this you'll find zillions of them on the big auction site and generally there are always some available on KEH.com. Expect to pay less than $50 for all but the most exquisitely "mint" copies. In exchange you'll get a small, light, easy to handle lens that you'll want to stop down to about f 3.5 or f4.0 in order to get nicely sharp images. More aperture....up to f8.0 keeps improving the sides and corners and....adds to the already sharp central core of the images. 

When I came back home from my exploration with this old friend I was so happy with the way it worked in the "field" and the way the images looked in Lightroom that I called my local camera merchant and asked my expert if they had any other Canon FD glass in their used inventory. I'm currently looking for three focal lengths. I'd like a 35mm f2.0, a 50mm f1.4 and any one of an assortment of 85-100mm lenses. As long as they work and the optics are good I'll take em. 

Why? Because sometimes perfection isn't as perfect as it's cracked up to be. And most of these lenses are still very good performers with unique "fingerprints." Couple that with "smaller and lighter" and you have the winning formula for making the kind of images I like. Kind of consider it embracing "good enough" in trade for smaller, lighter and less stuffy. 

By the way, the kid is doing well. Eating like a horse (I forgot that 26 year olds can really put it away...) and recovering quickly. 

Here's some images from this morning: 

This is where I park when I go downtown. It's shaded from about 1pm onward. 

It's on a quiet, non-residential street and it's in front of law offices, etc. 

It's safe and I've never had to pay a meter there...

That white car is mine.

This place closed early in the pandemic (2020) and nothing has happened yet with the space. 

I'm endlessly curious about it. It's a really nice restaurant and bar space...

note the presence of direct light and no flare. Seems people could make 

very satisfactory, cheap lenses even 46 years ago.

 I like the black and white straight out of the Leica SL. It's nice.

A different color palette.

Plenty detailed. The lens has a decent ability to deliver resolution and sharpness when used 

at f4.5 or f5.6. I'd use it to this day; even for work.

It's safe to presume that what were considered failings of earlier lenses used on earlier digital cameras has been largely remedied by toning down the AA filters on newer, higher res digital cameras and also making the filter stacks thinner so light rays didn't get clipped as they moved toward the corners and edges of sensors. Better sensor technology lifts all lenses. Even these older, "made-for-film" lenses we've held onto. 

Got any old Canon lenses sitting around? Ready to get rid of that 100mm f2.0 or f2.8? No use for that 50mm f1.4 that's just sitting on the edge of your desk in your Summer house? No space in your Leica drawer for "lesser" glass? We can help.

Oppressively hot here but I'm staying indoors and acting as the boy's butler this week. I'm hoping for a generous tip but you know the reputation these millennials have.....