My final version of Jaston in black and white. And a color file to compare with.

 

I've been working on dialing in my skills at converting from files shot in Raw/Color to black and white images that work well in print and online. I photographed Jaston for this image originally as a color file. I brought it into Photoshop and corrected all the stuff I wanted to "fix" while in the color space. They I used the black and white sub-menu in the adjustments menu to convert the image to black and white. Since the final use of the image will be a very large wall print at a University alumni center I decided to try the "zoom" control in Adobe PhotoShop's "Neural Filters" panel.

You can enlarge the image with "zoom" while letting the "AI" program calculate new detail, sharpness and noise reduction. I was able to take a cropped 47.5 megapixel image and res it up to about 9200 pixels on the long side. The original crop was to about 6000 pixel so it's a bit more than a 50% linear increase.

I thought it worked really well. 

Someone at the school had the idea to do a very stylized version of the images on this "wall of fame" and I got called in by the artist to try and work within their style but to also get an image that was closer to his idea of what his image should look like. 

Here's a sample of one version that we might send along. The other choice is to send the image as above (no texture or color treatment) and let them apply their post processing changes to the image to match the other works. 

I will say that the SL2 and the Sigma 90mm f2.8 are a very nice combination for all manner of portrait work. And, I hope this series puts to bed the rumor that I am only capable of making nice portraits of beautiful young women... 

Original color sample below:

Nostalgia. Not all it's cracked up to be. Looking at the Canon FTb QL.

A shutter noise like the pounding of metal garbage can lids and minor explosions.

I had such great memories about my early film days in general and the Canon cameras I used in particular. At the time the cameras seemed almost magical. Robust, quick to operate and satisfying to have in one's hands. Then came all the ensuing years of AF film SLRs which atrophied many peoples' abilities to manual focus lenses at all. After that came digital cameras with quieter shutters, endless potential frames, instant feedback, higher sharpness and ample resolution. But I never thought about those progressive changes until I confronted them last week. My nostalgia got head-butted by reality. 

I'd ordered an inexpensive 1970's era, manual SLR mostly just to get the lens that came bundled with it. I like the lens a lot. It's a Canon 50mm f1.4 FD lens and it's tons of fun to shoot with. The colors and tonalities of the files it creates are different from contemporary lenses and fuel a healthy nostalgia for one version of how images looked back in earlier times. With a good adapter the lens becomes more or less transparent to use. Almost.

But not so with the camera body. Oh...I've forgotten so much.

The FTb QL was a very popular SLR for Canon. It was the step-up camera from the very, very rudimentary Canon TX. While the TX topped out at 1/500th of a second the shutter in the FTb soared all the way up to 1/1000th of a second. The model I just received was the second version of the FTb which had a badge on the front reading, "QL." That stood for quick load. It has a mechanism that allowed one to put the film leader over a sprocket and then a spring loaded plate came down to hold the film in place while the back of the camera was closed. On the TX you have to finagle the end of the film into a slot, hold the film with one finger while you wound a bit on and gingerly closed the back, then said a little prayer to the camera gods asking that the film would not slip out of the slot and fail to go through the camera. A failing you generally discovered when you started wondering if Kodak had really started to put 50 or 60 exposures on a roll instead of the usual 36.... The QL function saved a lot of newbies a lot of embarrassment and ego-shattering failure...at least when it came to getting the film installed. 

The FTb, like most bigger cameras of the time, was built like an absolute tank. Not a Russian tank, the pentaprisms don't tend to fly off,  but more like one of those really cool Swedish tanks. Solid metal everywhere and all the weight that goes with it. 

I would call all of these earlier cameras semi-automatic because, with a matched, branded lens you could actually meter an exposure. And the exposure was pretty much in the ball park ... if you aimed it at the right target. In my mind, at least back then, a fully manual camera was something like a Leica M4 or M3, or a non-metered prism Nikon F. You had to figure out your exposures on your own with one of those non-metered bodies. With the FTb you could set the ASA (now ISO), watch a needle move in the finder and try to match up the needle with a lollipop/indicator that was hooked up to the aperture to that needle. If everything lined up you were probably going to get somewhere in the ballpark with your film shots. 

These old cameras charge the shutter when you use the film wind lever to move the film to the next frame. In fact, when you wind on to the next frame a whole series of things happen. The shutter curtain returns to its ready position, the mirror spring is tensioned and the camera waits breathlessly for your next move. 

And you can do all these things for days, months and years without ever needing a battery. No need to plug in a USB 3 cable. No auxiliary battery pack needed. In fact, the only thing the small, mercury battery ever did was to make the meter work. That's it. And now, since mercury batteries were outlawed in most countries about 40 years ago you'll need to find a silver oxide replacement and recalibrate your metering system for the camera. It's easier just to either memorize the most useful, general exposures for the film you like best or to buy and learn to use an external light meter. 

I thought for a while (a day or two) that I'd enjoy buying a dozen rolls of film and trying my hand at the craft as I had practiced it in my youth. I checked on the price of Tri-X film and almost fell off my chair. It's between $12 and $14 a roll, depending on the snootiness of your retailer, and that doesn't include processing or printing. Here in Austin, done right, I'd have to drop about $25 just to buy, process and contact print one roll of film. To revisit the darkroom I ended up working in would mean re-buying a Leica V35 enlarger, sodium vapor safelights, a couple thousand dollars worth of plumbing, etc. I started to realize the folly of even thinking about it especially since I'm very happy making black and white images with my digital cameras, along with a little nudge from Lightroom.

But the final blow to my own nostalgia came when I operated the film wind lever, pulled the camera up to my eye, tried to frame something through the dark and dingy viewfinderfinder and then, with much anticipation, fired off the shutter. I had completely forgotten just how loud, how harsh and how kinetic those old cameras were in actual use. There's no way I'd put up with that now. In fact, I should probably go and have my hearing checked after having clicked off the shutter ten or twenty times in a short session of cameras induced time travel. 

It reminded me that doctors in the 1970s were still working with re-useable syringe needles back then. Cars belched smoke with abandon and without the benefit of catalytic converters, people smoked in airplanes and hospitals, and railed against having to use seatbelts in their automobiles. I'll now add loud, busy cameras to that list. 

It was fun back then because I didn't know any better but from my perch here in the future I can only feel pity for the photographers of that age. Who, of course, were busy pitying those older photographers carrying around Graflex cameras and flashbulbs, and those few were just glad not to be coating their own plates. And those plate coaters were happy not to stand over a steaming mercury bath to finish out their work. And accelerate their mortality...

Be careful what you wish for...you might get it. It might be attached to that cool lens you thought you wanted it. Almost sounds like the lyrics in "For the Roses" by Elvis Costello...

So there is my modern day assessment of the Canon FTb and its ilk. Take it with a grain of salt.

Wrapping my brain around just how cool I thought 1/1,000th of a second on 

a shutter speed dial seemed back in the middle of the 1970s. 

A massive move forward. The quick load mechanism.

And in several places on the camera are little signs instructing the user in how to

take advantage of these modern engineering breakthroughs. 

Anybody need a decent FTb body? Let me know....

 

Variation on Jaston #3.

 

Jaston Williams. In Studio. August 2022.

Variation on Jaston #2.

Jaston Williams. In Studio. August 2022.

 

Variation on Jaston.

 

Jaston Williams. In studio. August 2022.

Another morning in paradise. A walk to the bank.

Some mornings the light looks delicious. When I have checks to deposit at my bank, and I have the time to forgo electronic banking, I like to park on the edge of our downtown and walk to the center where my bank has their offices. It's old fashioned but I like handing my deposit slip across the counter to a teller, discuss the weather and get a receipt. It's another excuse to walk instead of doing things the easy way. 

It was warm and as humid as ever this morning. But the light was really sweet. Not too intense but not gloomy either. I photographed a few little scenes until I got to the spot above and then I realized that I really liked the giant chimney in the foreground and the cloudy speckled sky in the background so I stopped and comped up a shot. As I was started to shoot a woman walked through the small patch of sunlight that was illuminating a small part of a wall. It was just right. 

I liked the square of light just in the right spot so I walked closer and tried a few variations. I liked all of them. It only takes a day or two of rain in Austin for all the green to stand up straighter and look refreshed. The clouds were right out of "landscape photograph central casting." 

I traveled light today. No big camera and no big lens. Just a diminutive Leica CL and the quirky looking TTArtisan 17mm lens. After walking around with bigger, heavier cameras I was barely cognizant of the CL's presence. But I like the way it renders photographs. It can be really nice. 

I moved on after I got a decent vertical, got coffee at a newly opened coffee shop and then wended my way back home to answer some e-mails and also to send a folder of theater images to a creative director in Switzerland. I was in such a good mood by the time I wrapped up my morning chores that I bought a new pair of my favorite Summer pants on REI.com. They were on sale. How could I resist? 

MJ is playing with a monochrome version of the Sigma fp over at theonlinephotographer and I'm very interested to see how he likes the camera and the 45mm lens he's using. I never thought about it before but it might be the perfect black and white camera. Mods or not. Worth taking a look at...
 

"He was never overburdened with conventional good taste."

 Phone photo. 

I've been reading a series of essays in the book about Richard Avedon called: 

Evidence: 1944-1994 Richard Avedon

In one of the two major essays in the book writer Adam Gopnik is reporting on a walking adventure through Manhattan with Avedon. As a tangent to their walk they are looking for a small, witty gift to send to a friend's wife. They walked into a tacky, little gift shop and found some costume jewelry which Avedon considered and then rejected. The writer noted that: "Avedon was never overburdened with conventional good taste." I love the turn of phrase. 

In another essay in a different book Avedon was quoted as saying this about portraiture: “All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

I think I usually spin my wheels too quickly and don't take enough time to pause and really soak in everything that goes into our ideas of what photography is and where we find the whole construction of it right here and right now. In our present moment. We are living through a profound change in our cultural perceptions of what constitutes a legitimate photograph and how our photographs should look. 

On a domestic note we had a double door at the house fixed yesterday by a good carpenter. It was a french door with two large individual doors paned with big, solid pieces of glass over most of each. One needed to have some wood damage removed and fixed while both needed new sweeps. The doors are out of intensive care now, thanks to the carpenter's skill, but the responsibility for putting a couple coats of primer over the repaired parts, and then painting the doors, falls to me and B. 

In preparation for applying primer we had to sand and smooth the doors and prepare the surfaces so that our upcoming painting will create a seamless finish. There is a lot more work than it seems when you stumble into another professional's field of expertise...

But it was such a non-photographic thing to do that it effectively separated me from my mania to go out each day and look for photographs. And I think that's a good thing. 

After we got the second coat of primer on not just those two rehabilitated  doors but also on four others we were done for the day. Not physically exhausted so much as mentally fatigued from the rigor of doing something outside our areas of expertise. Thank goodness I had the good judgement to hire a professional to do the expert work. 

We did the exterior work early when it was still cool and almost comfortable outside. When we finished the inside work the day had turned hot, humid and cloudy. It just didn't feel like a day for me to be wondering around aimlessly, outside, with a camera. The reading chair and the soft light through the window pulled on me like an attached rope harnessing me into the air conditioning. 

The Avedon book I picked off the shelf; this one in particular, has always seemed to be to be the roadmap to understanding his approach to his best work. A cryptology key to the roots of his process and his deep emotional and intellectual connections to portraiture. Adam Gopnik's essay felt different today. As if I had slowed down enough to actually consume it at a pace that, for the first time, allowed me not just a literal reading but a reading with enough pause and pacing to savor the texture of Gopnik's thoughts. To make his observations stick like epoxy to my usually restless mind. 

When I walked back out to my studio a bit later all the lighting gear looked new and fresh and I felt a renewal of passion for my own portraiture. 

It seems good to take a break every once in a while to let my appreciation catch up to my experiences. Too often we move too fast for the satisfaction of our work to really stick. I'm generally guilty of having my eyes too firmly fixed on the project just a few feet into the future to really savor what we've already done. 

But not today.

The Canon 50mm f1.4 FD lens I ordered came in yesterday evening. I walked around with it today and shots some tests. Mixed results. I love it and am keeping it. It does create some green fringe on highlights at the two widest apertures. Not a "deal-killer" for me.

 

Here is my test for center sharpness when used wide open. This  lens, circa 1972, does very, very well as you can see from the rendering of the type on the front of the lens. That's where I put the focus. This was shot at f1.4 to show off the bokeh in the background. I don't know how to describe bokeh but it looks pretty cool to me. 

This sample and the  enlargement of the center rose was shot with the lens at f1.4.

this image and the one just below were shot at f2.0

Interesting...Adobe still has a lens profile in Lightroom for the Canon 50mm f1.4 FD lens. A lens that's fifty years old. I think it's pretty wonderful. And for all the people who've been sending "hate" mail about the usurious prices of those "damn" Leicas... this lens came in a package with a mint, black, Canon FTb camera, also from the early 1970s, for the princely sum of $150. So, if I divide out the package and resell the camera body I'm pegging the price of this lens alone at about $75. The Leica SL body did not refuse to work with the lens. It did not reject it or try to destroy it. They just worked it out. And I think the results are good. Except for the green fringing on the white chairs.  Yeah. There's that.  I expect that I could have gotten the same overall results with a Panasonic S5 or a Sigma fp. The Leica was just convenient. 

So much hate for such good gear....

I photographed last evening for a group called, "Local Opera, Local Artists". Their logo reads: "LOLA". But this is a review of a camera and two lenses, not of the opera...

Liz Cass as "Dinah LeFarge"

This was an assignment I walked into blind. I'd never met the people at the production company before. Never been to the "theater" where I'd be photographing the dress rehearsal of "Lardo Weeping." A modern opera. I had no idea what to expect. 

It rained for the first time in months here in Austin yesterday. A good solid, multi-hour rain. A soaker. We all ran outside when it started and cheered. But then I went back in to pack up my stuff and make a change to my gear package. I was going to shoot the show completely in raw but had a change of mind and added a second memory card to each camera so I could shoot raw+jpeg and have the two file types on separate cards. Partly for back-up and partly because I wanted to see how good (or bad) the output from the cameras, in Jpeg, would look. Would it be useable? Could I save some processing time and some storage space? At least I'd be covered either way. 

The gear selection included two Leica SL cameras, one Leica Vario-Elmarit 24-90mm lens and a Panasonic 70-200mm f4.0 zoom. As an afterthought I tossed in a Sigma 65mm lens but that never came out of the case. I scaled back on batteries after I read the opera company's website and realized that the entire performance would last only 88 minutes. One in-camera battery each and one back-up battery for each camera should be plenty. I packed everything in the Gitzo backpack which works well but is a bit over-engineered. It's probably too well padded so the internal space is smaller than one would think when looking at the outside of the backpack. But on the flip side the backpack certainly does a stellar job protecting the cameras once you've stuffed them inside. 

Since it was pouring rain, and since Austin drivers are famously skittish drivers in any kind of weather other than "sunny and dry" I left an hour before I promised to be there. Sure, it's only nine miles away according to Maps but the straightest path is through downtown and, well, rush hour. I got there about ten minutes in front of my scheduled arrival time. 

But where was I? My last live performance photography was done on the main stage at Zach Theatre which sits just south of downtown on an incredibly valuable couple acres of land, adjacent to the park. The theater has seating for 400, a plush and roomy lobby with a soaring ceiling, a giant fly tower for backdrops, a huge stage and lavish bars;  all the features of a newish, world class theater. But yesterday I wound through downtown and snaked east of the freeway through a couple of detours and found myself looking at an old line of garage-doored, single storied shops from the 1970s. The final one on the row was Crashbox Theater. It's a dodgy space. Maybe 1500 square feet in total. The "auditorium" seats 40 and the air conditioning and electrical connections are all on their last legs. But after a few minutes it didn't seem to matter because there was a palpable excitement in the space and everyone I talked to was smart, focused, experienced, talented and carried great credentials with them. 

I talked to the lighting designer after getting a quick-run of-show brief by the director/stage manager. The main lighting was all tungsten. Not tungsten balanced LEDs but full on tungsten. And the lighting designer reminded me that as the tungstens dim they get warmer... Got it. I asked for a lighting cue and stepped into the stage with a white card to get a reading. Yep. 3200K. Pretty much right on the nose. They mentioned that they did have some LEDs for color effects but not as a main light source. All good to know. 

I got there early enough to have ample time to fine tune the cameras and get used to the feel of the room. The small crew, and the photographer (me), were all masked. I sat and went through the camera menus once again. I set the camera for Large Jpegs, standard saturation, one move less of contrast, and standard sharpness. I set the noise reduction up from my usual "low" setting to the standard (middle ground) noise reduction setting, figuring that if I didn't like the effect in the Jpegs I could change it in the raw files. The camera was set so only the EVF was live. I didn't want a bright set of rear screens antagonizing all the crew sitting behind me. It worked just fine because even with "EVF only" set as soon as you push the review button and your eye is not behind the viewfinder the camera defaults to the rear screen. 

I am a not a modern focuser. Sure, I use AF like almost everyone else but I've never learned to be comfortable with continuous AF or letting the camera select focus points or follow people. I like that center focusing square and I like the AF to lock when I push the shutter button half way down. Lately I've played around with back button focusing and it works well but when I have a lot to shoot in a short amount of time my brain defaults to what I know best. 

I sat three rows up from the floor level stage. I had one camera with the wide-to-slight telephoto zoom sitting on a chair to my left and the other camera with the telephoto zoom on a chair to my right. I spent the evening going back and forth between the two but most of my use and emphasis was on the camera with the Leica zoom. Its wide angle to mid-tele reach was just right for the smaller space. 

With the white balance set to 3200K, with raw potential in reserve, the only thing I really needed to consider beside composition and focus was getting the exposure right as the light level changed. One surprising attribute of the SL cameras is how precisely the exposure and color on the EVF track the color and levels of my computer screen back in the studio. With other cameras I consistently get back home to find that most of my images are about a half stop (or more) darker than they appear in those camera finders when shooting on darker locations. 

My target is always the exposure on the main actor's face. If I get that right I think everything will usually fall right into place. I think most theatrical photographers live in fear of blowing out highlights and each of us has some sort of method or process in place to prevent that. Since we're trying to catch constantly changing expressions bracketing isn't as useful as it might otherwise be. A really well calibrated viewfinder goes a long way toward helping you see just how close you are getting to the edge of highlight burnout. While histograms can, I guess, be useful, it only takes a few bright white props in a frame to peg the histogram and encourage one to wildly underexpose. Blinking highlights are good if you have them. As are zebras that you can set to 100%. In the absence of those measurement tools a well calibrated screen is your best ally. 

The EVF tech of the SL cameras is the older LCD stuff. The newer cameras, like the SL2 and SL2-S have the latest LED EVFs and it was tempting to bring along the SL2 but I was set on using the older cameras because 24 megapixels (raw or Jpeg) is the sweet spot for quality, speed, storage and...quality... for adventures on which you'll be shooting a lot of frames in a short amount of time. Also, the sensor in the SL, while not perfect for raising shadows in post, has bigger pixels and I think it handles lower light and higher ISO settings better than the newer camera. It's probably a moot point if you are just shooting Jpegs and are downsampling the SL2 in camera at the time of photographing to the 24 megapixel size. But you can't create smaller raw files so....

There were times I needed to quickly change ISO and that's handled pretty neatly on the SLs. I have the top left of the four buttons on the back set to go straight to ISO setting with a long push. A short push gets you to the "favorites" menu and a two quick pushes of the button gets you to the main menu. So, one long (two seconds?) push and I'm ready to switch from 3200 to 6400 without delay. The next button down is set for white balance. They are the only long settings I have to memorize since I rarely change anything else while shooting (except aperture and shutter speed but those are both on main dials). 

The top button on the right side of the rear panel is set to be the play back button if you give it two quick pushes. While a long push gets you straight into exposure compensation. The bottom button acts like the display button on other brands. It takes you through all the screen modes as you press it quickly. Long press it and you get metering mode (spot, all area, face detect, etc). 

Batteries worry me. I'm too used to grabbing a camera for a walk and leaving it on all the time so I can grab shots at random. But the batteries continue to drain and always faster than I think they will. But yesterday evening the entire show was in one long act and the way I was using the camera then seemed to be parsimonious with battery power. I have also found that native Leica SL lenses allow the camera to conserve battery power better than Sigma or Panasonic lenses on the same bodies. Manual lenses seem to be best of all because you're only using power for live view and shutter work but not focusing/moving big elements. Both cameras had at least half their battery power left after the show and I thought that was a great thing. And I have to say that they are the most comfortable cameras to have in my hand for shoots like this. But considering haptic while shooting a show is a bit of cheating since, during parts of the show that aren't made for photographs I can put both cameras down on their respective chairs and relax. Or settle my favorite one in my lap for a relaxed but higher state of readiness. 

I have three battery chargers for Leicas on the corner of my office desk. When I come back in from using the cameras I drop the batteries into the chargers. Usually, when using a charger, the battery sits in the holder and a green light eventually goes out, or it stops blinking and goes solid when the battery is fully charged. But the Leica chargers have a second, orange light that comes on at the 80% charge zone. If you are willing to forgo always charging to 100% I believe the batteries, when charged to just 80%, have a longer, healthier life. I notice the same thing on some mobile phones; you can set your phone to pause at 80% charge instead of always going for the "gold." The phone makers (and they should know) are quick to tell you this saves your batteries for the long haul.

Two of my desk chargers are for the SL/SL2 batteries while the third one is for CL batteries. I like to make sure we're playing with at least an "almost" full deck when I go out. That's the one thing about old film cameras that I really miss = their battery independence. 

There isn't much else to be said about the cameras. They do a good, yeoman-like job. With good exposure they are highly usable up to 6400 ISO and with lousy exposure you can still hit the 3200 mark. I ended up using the Jpegs for all the deliverables today since they were nicely exposed and had good noise reduction baked in. I'm sure, if this was a portrait assignment where we needed only one or two frames for final post production, the raw files could be made better but the Jpegs really do look nice. And they were quick and easy to work with in post.

So let's talk lenses. I used all kinds of standard zoom lenses starting, back in the dark ages, with the well regarded Nikon 28-70mm f2.8 lens. It was a great one. Others have included the 24-105mm Zeiss for Sony, the Canon 24-105mm L series, the latest Sigma 24-70mm Art lens, and the Panasonic 24-105mm S lens. All are pretty good. All could be used for just about any project that would call for the middle focal ranges. But, and you knew this was coming, the Leica 24-90mm is just wonderful. It's too big. It's too heavy. It's way too expensive. But it's also way too sharp and way too optically near perfect. 

This praise is based on the fact that I spent my time with this lens last night shooting everything handheld and at the lens's maximum aperture (which ranges between f2.8 and f4.0 depending on focal length). It's as sharp or sharper at the wide open settings than any number of prime lenses I've used in the past. When you add in the rendering and the contrast it just smokes most lenses in its focal range class. zoom or prime.

I have to say though that it's absolutely not the lens you want to use for casual street photos because it's too ungainly. You know the saying "the elephant in the room"? Well this lens is the "elephant in your camera bag." For something like theater work that's mostly meaningless because you're not traveling around and you have the opportunity to set the camera and lens in your lap in between scenes with good that have good,  photogenic action. And just being seated while shooting takes a lot of the strain off your muscles. But dropping this one into your backpack in anticipation of a ten mile hike is almost absurd.

If I need to travel lighter I always reach for the Panasonic 24-105mm or, even better, the Panasonic 20-60mm lens. But when I want to do my best work wide and normal I have to say that the Leica lens is superior. Is it $5,000 more dollars superior? All depends on how much money you make by shooting it. 

My longer lens has been, for me, a well proven and reliable tool. It's more than adequately sharp when used wide open at f4.0 and only when shooting portraits in the studio to do I bother to stop it down. It's nice to have the longer range and I use it a lot when I have to shoot from the center of the house in a bigger theater but last evening it mostly saw some tight head and shoulders cropped images that weren't essential but were nice to have. It's also a big and heavy lens and, again, would not be my first choice for scampering over rock faces at the state park. I'd choose something like the Olympus 40-150mm f4.0 pro instead. About the same weight as the 70-200mm's tripod mount collar.... But I'd have to give up some sensor real estate. 

At the end of the show I headed out and drove through some more intermittent rain. That was actually a nice thing. By 8:30 traffic had died down and over on the horizon the last vestiges of daylight were peaking through. It made for a visually different drive home than the relentless, clear sky sunsets.

How was the show? Delightful. Funny, smart and all sung as an opera. I'll probably buy a couple tickets and head back for the premier. The actor is extremely talented, has perfect comedic timing and the material is wonderful. A blend of bitter and hilarious. All mixed together. 

I'm very happy with the files and have not even bothered to crack open the raw files. I guess I should take a look at them next...

Peter Stopschinski, Composer/Pianist

In his red pajamas. Tungsten light is great for reds...

I've missed shooting for theaters. Now that we're hitting lower Covid numbers here in

Austin I hope the big shows come back. And that we all feel safe photographing them.

 

Bog Note: It's now raining!!!! It's raining with gusto. Happiness.

 

Live Theater Assignment this evening. Packing up. First live performance photography since 2020.

 This evening I'm heading over to a small theater to photograph the dress rehearsal of a modern opera. I have no idea about the content or the extended storyline but I'm thrilled to be back shooting live theater. The space is smaller than the main stage at Zach Theatre....by a factor of 4. I won't need much in the way of really long telephotos but I did pack judiciously. 

I'm stuffing  two cameras and three lenses into that Gitzo photo backpack I got earlier in the Summer. And it seems like a good idea since we're forecasted to have rain this afternoon/evening for the first time since June. Really. June.  (Finally, the forecast actually came true. Good rain this afternoon and more on the way!!!).

So, what am I packing? I decided to take the two Leica SL camera bodies, set up identically. Raw on one card and Jpeg on the other. The camera does good high ISO and I've gotten a lot of experience using them on every kind of project. I've packed four extra batteries --- because you never know.

The wide angle lens I packed is the Leica 24-90mm f2.8-4.0. It's sharp wide open. I'll use it there. The second lens is the big (but not too big) Panasonic 70-200mm f4.0 S-Pro. The reach might be overkill for the smaller space but it's better to have it and not use it than to want it/not have it and be disappointed because it got left at home. The third lens I packed is the Sigma 65mm f2.0 lens. Just because. 

For an opera this one is going to be short. About 90 minutes. Straight through with no intermission. Just the way I like it.

After a long hiatus it seems like the arts groups are getting back into action and ramping up their shows. I think I'll take along a face mask. Just in case...

Mural Artist Working on the Streets of Berlin. And why I didn't buy a camera today...

 This is an image I took in Berlin in 2013 while on a trip to test out Samsung's failed Galaxy NX camera. I would have liked the camera pretty well if it hadn't "featured" an Android operating system and had just stuck to producing photographs and video. But when it worked it worked well. The 20 megapixel sensor was actually very good and the color science in that camera, and then the even better color science in the NX-1, were both highly competitive. No gripes about the lenses either. 

What killed the NX? I will probably never know for sure but the complexity of the OS was probably a big part of their problem. Too much horsepower running too many unnecessary apps which caused some reliability/ freezing issues. But as Thom Hogan seems to always tell us, those consumers really, really want Wi-fi, Bluetooth and Cell capability all crammed into their cameras so they can share..... I still don't buy it. And neither did consumers at the time. But it was novel to be able to play Candy Crush on one's camera....

But the camera was capable of producing nice images...

Why I didn't buy a camera today...

After wading through Michael Johnston's latest post, all peppered with links about monochrome-dedicated camera stuff, and reading David Farkas's article (on Red Dot Forum) comparing the black and white performance of various Leicas, I got it into my head that a Leica Q2 Monochrom in the "Reporter" finish might be a fun place to start my own dive into discovering the (well) hidden joys of strict black and white photography in the digital age. 

Now, I've read for years and years that Leica is a failed company with antiquated products and produces Luxe cameras solely for trust-fund hipsters with "daddy's credit card" and is also a maker of favorite toys for orthodontists, west coast plastic surgeons, and hedge fund managers. The common theme among photographers is that the Leica cameras are so expensive that no "real" photographer would ever buy one and use it for commercial purposes. There is also the assumption that since their M series cameras don't autofocus nearly as fast as Sony cameras the company will soon be bankrupted because....who wants a camera that can't AF?

I was going to wake up today and prove everyone wrong. I'd buy that Q2 monochrome in "Reporter/Kevlar" regalia and start using it for paid jobs. And personal work. And that's taking into account that I've never held a medical license or been investigated by the S.E.C. I was on a campaign to take my black and white work to a higher level and after seeing all the buzz about the Leica monochrom (and being highly impulsive) I thought it would be a good place to start. 

No more fiddling with the monochrome settings in the SL or SL2 or the CL or the TL2. From now on it would be the pure discipline of the majestic two colors = black and white. 

But then reality interceded. All of the Q2 Monochrom Reporter edition cameras are sold out. No more are available. Sure, you can still get a "regular" Q2 but with all that icky color potential who would want one. And you can still get a monochrome version but who doesn't want a great paint color and a Kevlar body wrap?

I guess if Leica were more successful at making and selling cameras they would have been able to make more of the Monochrom Reporter models. Now I've resigned myself to just going back to work with the less glamorous and obviously less desirable Leicas. I'm so disappointed.