10.22.2022
Auditioning camera and lens choices with travel in mind. I came across this particular atmospheric environmental expression this afternoon...
We are so "blessed" to have an additional 400,000 people in town this weekend for Formula One.
A whole different set of folks from the 140,000 or so that were here on the last two weekends for the Austin City Limits music festival.
What fresh hell awaits us next?
I have attended the F1 in Austin on two different years in the service of clients. Loud cars go around and around on a track. Some are faster than others. No matter where you sit you only see, at any one time, about 4% of each lap. About 12 seconds of car viewing per circuit.
Insanity is said to be doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. This is obviously a text book case.
Did I mention the noise? I cannot imagine what possesses people to come from all over the globe for something like this. But just because I think car races are stupid doesn't mean it has no value for other people. To each their own.
At least, unlike ACL Fest, it's far enough away from my home not to inflict on us burdensome traffic, loud noise and crowds. If anything it has lightened traffic in my neighborhood. And local restaurants are less crowded.
Some silver linings; I guess.
10.21.2022
Leica introduces two cameras this week. One I am indifferent to and the other I wish I could justify ordering right away. Such is life.
This week Leica announced that they are re-introducing the film-driven M6 camera. It's not a special edition but will be available only in limited quantities. Apparently crafting a camera by hand with expert craftspeople is not quickly scalable. Go figure.
For a while in the 1990s I shot many, many corporate shows and events with a collection of three Leica M cameras and assorted M lenses. There was the .85 version (eyepiece magnification) which was great for 50mm and 90mm lenses. There were two of the .72 versions I used as "all arounders." The Leica M lenses were great performers and the rangefinder focusing was something I adapted to right away. But the bodies weren't without their issues.
The rose colored glasses of memory haven't completely blocked from my memory that one brand new M6 was delivered to me with a totally uncalibrated rangefinder. Just absolutely unusable. Right out of the box. Back it went and was replaced by another unit. Over time the rangefinders in the other two cameras slowly drifted out of compliance to the point that two of my three M6 cameras became zone focusing only models. Back in the 1990s service could be okay or it could be horrible depending on what repair was needed. If it was a rangefinder calibration you might have wanted to send the lens you used most with that body to be calibrated in tandem. If it was a shutter repair you might want to pretend you'd never get the camera back and just buy another one to take up the slack.
There were other issues. I guess the most limiting for a corporate event shooter was the 1/50th of a second flash sync. If you needed any sort of fill flash outdoors you were mostly out of luck. But back then even the Nikon F3 only got to 1/90th of a second for flash sync so it didn't seem as egregious.
Loading my M6s was a chore. I got really good at it because I shot a lot of film but that didn't make it any less time consuming. Or fraught.
I'm less inclined to glorify the M6 than some of the newer users who never got to shoot with something as glorious as the Leica M3 SS (single stroke) with a nice 50mm Summicron. That product absolutely defined the golden age of photography and I would conjecture that most of those cameras from the mid-1950s are still in use. They were actually built to last. And many a Leica shooter would tell you that their M3 was still banging out Kodachrome or Tri-X long after their newer M6 bit the dust and headed back to the repair haus.
I guess I feel the same way about the M6 film camera as I would if you showed up and replaced my fuel injection system on my Subaru with a carburetor or two. Or if I still had one of my air cooled Volkswagens that required me to crawl under the car and reset the valve clearances on a regular basis. I remember my Karmen Ghia and my Fastback with fondness but I'd never want to go back to cars that need maintenance every 1,500 miles and were bereft of air conditioning... Just not going back.
I predict that many will buy the new M6. Users will spend a year getting to know all the ins and outs of photographing with a rangefinder film camera. Then, a year later, all those new user M6s will hit the resale market in one prolonged rush. The owners finally figuring out that we've moved on and that the advantages of digital cameras far outweigh the nostalgia of M glory. Or the nostalgia for film for that matter.
But I'm a heavy frame user so that's just my opinion from my spot on the photography spectrum. If you are a careful worker and don't shoot too many frames your affinity for the old tech might be quite different. Your balance between quantity and love of film might be much different.
So, will I rush out and buy a new version Leica M6? No freakin way. You may have noticed that while I might change (digital) cameras systems frequently except for a Hasselblad tens years ago or so I have not acquired ANY new or used film cameras and have no intention of doing so. Too much work. Too little cheese.
The other camera I mentioned is a different story. I've had my eye on the Leica SLS-2 mirrorless sibling to the SL2 since, well, since it was introduced. It's got features I like such as breathtaking high ISO, noise free performance. It's a great video camera and has codecs that I like. The video files don't need to be line-skipped or downsampled as much or in the same way as the video files from the SL2 so that means sharper, more detailed video imaging. And.....it's digital. Once I buy it everything I do with it comes at no additional charge. Well, except for those pesky Leica batteries...
I've been keeping an eye on the used market for one but the announcement this week of the Reporter model sure stuck a hot pin in my acquisition gland. It's just like the Q2 reporter in that it the SL2-S Reporter sports the tough, matte green paint over the (all) metal chassis. It also has the Kevlar/Aramid covering where the stock units have leather or faux leather grippy material. The Reporter SL2-S just looks so cool and is only a couple hundred dollars more than a stock unit. I love the look. But every time my finger hovers near the "Pre-Order" button at the Leica Store Miami webpage for the SL2-S Reporter I reach for one of my original Leica SL cameras, cradle it in my hands, and it seems to assuage and defuse the rampant desire for the new camera.
But it's a dicey time. My birthday is near the end of this month and my track record of buying myself great birthday presents presages danger on the horizon. I guess I'm procrastinating to I can eventually venture back to their site and see the word's, "Sold Out" on that product thus saving me yet another bout of needless expenditure.
But at least at its core the SL2-S is a practical and useful tool for this age. Even if you get the one in Army Fatigue Green.....
Yes, I know. Your mileage will vary. But that doesn't make the Reporter version a bad choice for everyone.
10.20.2022
And Just Like That We're Back Knee Deep in Video. But it was Fun.
Today's project was shooting a video for a company that uses swimming pools as part of a geothermal strategy for air conditioning. Adding in a cooling tower means you can control the temperature of the pool water as well. In the Texas Summers air conditioning systems that use water for heat transfer run more efficiently, run with less system stress, and actually get better and better at their primary function as the weather gets hotter and hotter.
The assignment was to go to an architect's "green" home and interview him out by the pool he uses for his own home system. He's been doing green designing and building for over thirty years and he had the system installed in his own home over two decades ago. He was thrilled to talk to my clients on camera about how good the system has been for him and his clients. And about the cost savings.
We (Kirk and primary client) wanted to use two cameras for the interview so we could cut from a tight waist up shot to a wider, different angle. It's nice to shift angles during a program to prevent as much viewer boredom as possible. Since both cameras were set up and shooting 4K video we also knew we could make good use of the ability to crop or use a "Ken Burns" effect (pan and scan) if we felt the need.
10.19.2022
Channeling my inner Garry Winogrand on the very same streets from which he harvested images while in Austin, Texas.
10.18.2022
I have achieved nearly complete downtown anonymity. A milestone day. But vaguely embarrassing...
10.17.2022
We got our first cold weather of the season today. It got down to 60° and stayed there most of the day. Might get even cooler in the middle of the week.
I'm starting to think that all of the "practice" photos we take when we are just out with our cameras, tasked with no projects and no agenda in mind, are very much disposable. Maybe it's even a good exercise to learn how to toss away images permanently after you've looked at them. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in having hard disks more or less filled with lots of "almost" "nearly" "pretty good except for...." "so close" "so boring" etc. photographs. Someone mentioned on a different blog site that various masters of 20th century photography often felt the need to shoot two or three rolls of film every day, just to stay "tuned". Just to stay warmed up for the main events.
Josef Koudelka was reported to have walked around a friend's house aimlessly shooting his camera each morning until he'd blasted through a couple of rolls of film. He felt it was something he needed to do to keep from getting rusty. Playing the scales as it were.
I seem to do the same thing but with the fecundity of digital cameras I come back home with hundreds and hundreds of frames. Not a handful. Not just a couple dozen. Some indifferent, most boring, but a few with promise. A very few.
Schooled in the days of film photography we got into the mindset of never throwing images away. Even "seconds" or almost frames could be recycled as stock images or something. Now the costs of keeping a half million images on hand is trivial but the burden of having them in the mental subroutines we use to remember where we store it all is brutal. Excessive. Debilitating.
Lately, like a sport fisherman, I've been tossing lots of catches back into the ocean of photos once I feel I've bagged my limit. I think I've come to a somewhat rational conclusion that since I'm not inclined to stop shooting all these files, wanted and unwanted, they are going to continue to increase in quantity and will eventually gum up the works. Both literally and figuratively.
I've become less attached to the images that I used to be. Maybe it's the realization of my own fleeing years and the mortal goal posts getting progressively closer but I've realized that I don't want to spend whatever years (hopefully decades and decades) I have left hunched over the hot fires of a jam-packed computer sorting wheat from chaff and making some sort of catalog that will eventually dissolve like sugar in hot water. Better to start tossing now and with gusto then to become trapped by images that linger; vaguely wanted but mostly only as signposts along the way and not as real art, with real value. To me or anyone else.
I like the image above. But it's not very compelling. I don't have a story that goes with it. It's decor in some downtown building at the corner of two famous streets. But whatever art is contains is lodged with the actual object and not my haphazard documentation of it. I can now bring myself to share it once here and then discard it permanently. A tiny part of a gorged hard drive will probably breathe a very small sigh of relief but then gird itself for the onslaught of more.
It's an addiction to keep shooting when you've filled every nook and cranny of storage you own. Like a gambling addict the addicting rationale is to just keep buying more of those cute little hard drives and keep hoping that one of the stored images is a blockbuster prize/the winning lottery number, the must have NFT that's just temporarily dormant. But with the full knowledge that you'll never be shouting "Bingo!" Or "read em and weep" where all these images are concerned.
You know the ones you need to keep. They are of treasured memories. Of close loved ones and their visual history. Your collection of celebrity photographs that may increase in value as the news cycles become ever more rabid and desparate. You keep the images that cause you to pause and look and smile every time you see them on your screen. But damn man, it's time to get rid of all the rest.
Cult camera and lens takes its place as the best "point and shoot" / eccentric, weird camera of this decade. And I'm not the only one who thinks so.....kinda.
I still experiment with the 24mm f3.5 lens from Sigma and also the little 90mm but I keep coming back to the 45mm f2.8 as my perennial favorite. It's small, sharp and at the same time....mellow. It's just the right optic to pair with the cinema color mode. Yum. One of my favorite "point and shoot" cameras ever! But with the added happiness of interchangeable lenses, a full frame sensor and amazing image quality.
Sand bag. $40. I was thinking that's pretty pricy for a yard of canvas and 25 pounds of sand but I forgot to factor in the shipping charges. Can't imagine how much you'd have to pay Fedex to overnight a couple of sandbags to you. And, yes! I know they make empty sandbags you can fill yourself but where is the fun in that?
I have another friend who is a pro photographer in Atlanta. He also tests cameras and lenses and stuff for some online photo magazines. He's currently testing the Sigma fp L. The 60+ megapixel version. He wrote me yesterday to say that the rolling shutter ("Jello" effect) was off the charts bad. I wrote back to tell him that it's a feature, not a fault and to try not moving the camera around while making photographs.
I cannot print his reply here because we try to keep this a "family friendly" channel. He did not agree.
This negative appraisal of course triggered an opposing response from my brain and I've spent a small part of today re-researching the fp-L with a vague urge to add one to the fp. But in truth the fp is so close to perfect that the smart play might just to buy a second one of those just in case.
Prepping for video this week. V-Log in both Panasonic cameras. A wild mix but all within the same family.
More infö on that when it's all in the can.
What an exciting birthday month. Can't believe I'll be 67 years old by the end of next week and I'm still dragging around C-Stands and sandbags. My friends think I'm crazy and I'm starting to agree. I'll ponder it tomorrow morning at the early swim practice. Gotta get warmed up for the shoot....
10.16.2022
First Perfect Use Case I've Ever Seen with a Drone. Wow!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zz9oI3B6v4c&t=105s
I had to post this one. Even though I found it on the world's biggest photo site.
Caution: Wonderful mountaineering shots.
Jeez. What a weird time I had from 4:00 a.m. till about 11:00 a.m. this morning. And this is totally off topic if you are looking for something about photography...
My day started around 4:20 a.m. today. The early wake-up certainly wasn't by design. I had the alarm clock set for 7 a.m. with every intention of sleeping right up to the edge of the clock's precision and then, fully rested, leaping out of bed and heading over to the pool for the early Sunday masters swim practice. Yep. That was the plan. And that's how it usually goes in my little section of paradise. But not this weekend...
One of my least favorite parts of living and working in Austin is our seeming, collective addiction to mass attendance outdoor music festivals. I love live music in concert halls, small clubs, The Continental Club on Congress Ave. Even solo works at places like The Elephant Lounge. I've seen great concerts at the Bass Recital Hall at UT and on the stages of three or four live theaters sprinkled around town. But the joy of sitting in large dusty or (weather intruding) muddy field surrounded and hemmed in by chain link fences, being sold $12 dollar Cokes, using nasty Portable Potties strung out on the periphery of a hot field has always eluded me.
The music never has the polish of a indoor venue for many practical, acoustic reasons. And out of any crowd you'll have about 10% of people who are bad actors, or just plain obnoxious. So, at a concert with 100 people at a club you just need to deal with ten people. At a concert outdoors with 100,000 you'll need to be on guard for about 10,000 rude, surly, loud and inconsiderate people. Same 10%. Just feels a lot different when events scale up...
Our next door neighbors made the gamble to rent out their beautiful $3.25 million dollar house (currently on the market, if you are interested) for the weekend via AirBnB. Their house has multi-level pools on a well landscaped deck. Lots of bedrooms and bathrooms, and this weekend the house also had an infestation of 4 hard rocking, sociopathic couples. I had the suspicion there would be trouble when they first showed up and one woman in the group stood on the back deck, facing my house, and screamed over and over again, "This is just fucking incredible." I will give her points for the power of her voice and its range. While 150 feet away she sounded like she was right there in my backyard, standing right next to me.
Not a big deal in the moment. Just a precursor of things to come.
The whole group went off to sit in the dirt and damage their hearing at the concert. When they got back at 10:30 p.m. they started to party....hard. On the pool deck. Right across from my house. The yelling was prodigious. The hoots and yelps were sustained and feral and all of it prohibited by the rules laid out by AirBnB and the home owners (who had escaped to a hotel on the town's periphery). At 2 pm I'd had enough. Even with all the triple-paned windows in the world every scream and every bass note came though into my bedroom loud and clear. I texted the home owners who texted the "guests" who wound down the party at 2:30 and crawled off to sleep. (Rules from neighborhood, home owners and AirBnB: No parties, no noise after 10 pm).
They were gone again all of Saturday. The homeowners apologized to B. and me profusely. Claimed to have made the rules "very, very clear" to the renters. "It would not happen again..." Etc. And, amazingly, the evening progressed well. The group was out on the town. All quiet even at our late bedtime. Ah, the miracle of sleep...
Until the group got back to their temporary base next door and ramped up a thumping good party back on the pool deck complete with ugly people skinny dipping, loud conversations, excited screams and whoops, and lots and lots of music from the sound system. I woke up immediately from a deep and wonderful sleep and looked at my watch. It was f-ing 4:10 a.m. in the morning. They were in a quiet, family-centric, residential neighborhood blithely tossing away any semblance of empathy or restraint and hitting it hard.
I pulled on a pair of pants, walked over and asked/told them to turn off the music and take the noise inside. They mostly ignored me so I walked back over and texted the home owners. Again. At 4:20 in the morning. Calls were made. I assume the renters were threatened with being delisted from AirBnB. They finally shut their party down.
But if you are like me and you get shocked awake in the middle of the night, and then have a confrontation with a bunch of drunk and disorderly "young adults" there's no way you'll ever get back to sleep. I lay in bed thinking of all the most violent chapters in "The Gray Man" series of novels by Mark Greaney. I fantasized about shooting a Javelin missile through the patio doors of the house next door. I sent another volley of texts to the homeowners instead.
Then, since sleep was elusive, I got up, made a cup of Chamomile tea, tried to meditate about peacefulness and letting go of bad energy, and then (metaphorically) dragged myself to the first swim practice of the day at our club pool.
I usually brag here about my incredible swim performances but not today. All I can say is that rocks could swim better than me today. Two nights in a row of deeply disrupted sleep tend to take a toll. Being royally pissed off takes a toll. I moved down three lanes at practice. From pretty fast to just creeping along. It was my lamest swim workout of the year. But I consoled myself with the fact that I showed up and I finished the workout. That counts for something in my book.
When I got home there were more profuse apologies on my text string and the owners were next door in the process of evicting their renters. I didn't have even a milli-second of second thoughts. And anyone who calls out, "NIMBY" or "Get Off my Lawn" in response can go dig a hole and sit in it and meditate on all the ways that they are way out of touch.
Last I heard from the home owners the entire house smells of pot and cigarettes smoke. (Also forbidden by the rules). They've tallied up a couple thousand dollars of physical damage to their house. They've collected six bags of strewn about garbage. They're pretty furious as well. And they are not ancient men and women. They are right in the middle of the Gen X generation.
This was the second weekend of the big, loud, inconvenient music festival. I hope my neighbors have learned something valuable. I hope they sell the house very quickly to a nice retired couple with very young grandchildren and no desire to leverage their own homestead for some quick cash.
Working photographers really do need their sleep. We get absolutely feisty without it.
Now, who do I sue? The neighbors? The renters? AirBnB? All of them? Letting this one go, I guess. The neighbors are actually pretty sweet. But....that's strike one and two....
Photo news: big purchase on the agenda tomorrow. I need to buy one or two more sandbags. It's for the outdoor video shoot on Tuesday. Might be contending with some breezes.... Big, exciting purchase. More sandbags are never enough.