The Sigma 65mm f2.0 lens is wonderful. All the right stuff in one package. And affordable.

 

 I finished re-reading a favorite novel this afternoon (Ada. By Vladimir Nabokov) and decided to get out of the house and get some fresh air. I grabbed the Leica SL2 and the Sigma 65mm lens and headed over to the UT campus. I wanted to see Laura Wilson's show of Writers' Portraits one more time before the holidays kick in and schedules get crowded. Once again I was the only guest in a large gallery space on the first floor of the UT Humanities Research Center. I took a quick glance at their copy of the Gutenberg Bible, took a gander once again at the "first" photograph by Niepce and then headed in to really examine my favorite portraits from Wilson's show.

I'm drawn to classic portraits like the one of Carlos Fuentes just below. I wanted to look at about a dozen that I really like and since no one else was there I could get close enough even to examine the grain structure of the prints and make some observations about where we are in the state of art of large, exhibition printing. The images from digital were interspersed with images from traditional film and the printing technique was so polished that all of the prints fit together. Unless you looked to the grain --- and you'd have to have your nose nearly on the print to see it clearly, you couldn't tell which came from what medium. 

There is a freedom in seeing a show by one's self. You can criss cross the gallery from favorite to favorite, circle back again and never have to wait for someone to get out from in front of a print. You also don't have to listen to any inane mobile phone conversations.

Again, I strongly suggest that photographers in Austin make an effort to see the Laura Wilson show at the HRC before it comes down in January 2023.

After I soaked up what I came to look for I headed across Guadalupe street to Medici Coffee which is just opposite the UT campus on what used to be the main drag. I guess it's still considered the main drag but it has none of the foot traffic and vibrance that it did when I attended UT as a student or when I taught there shortly after. Many of the older building on the street have been shuttered and are awaiting demolition so they can be replaced by much bigger buildings with much less character.

I walked into the coffee shop and immediately felt my chronological age. Every person in the shop was so much younger. The young woman at the ordering station was soooo patient with me. I got the sense that she felt I might have never ordered (non-drip) coffee before. She was walking me through the process like someone explaining a concept to a person with a limited vocabulary or hampered cognition. She seemed amazed that I knew how to tap my credit card on the sensor to pay for my drink. Or that I could sign for the charge on an iPad screen with my finger. 

I also ordered a scone. In a kind and quiet way she let me know that since it was after 3 pm and since I was also buying a coffee the scone would be half price. She looked at my unshaven face and my clunky, ancient camera with sympathy bordering on pity. I'm presuming she jumped to the conclusion that someone my age, alone on a cold, gray and rainy day, was.... down on my luck. It's okay. I get it. I have white hair. I guess I can't hide my battle with imminent mortality from the youth of today. But, on the other hand, it was nice to see a display of kindness and compassion. Even if I don't necessarily deserve it.

Moving on.

I used to change camera systems more quickly than many in our audience might change their underwear. But I've held onto the Leica SL2 since the Autumn of 2020 so that makes my tenure with this particular camera and the surrounding infrastructure a little over two years and there's no sign yet of me tiring of shooting with it. I do like to add a few lenses from time to time just to keep the credit cards well greased but I've yet to come across a camera or a system I'd prefer to shoot with now. That bodes poorly for my local retailer but it does help me focus on working with the camera more intently.

The L mount system in general has been a lovely platform for shooting with a wide variety of lenses.

Today I pulled the 65mm Sigma out of the drawer and took it out for a spin. It's a solid lens and a bit heavy but it's a good and comfortable match for the SL2. The finder image is really good for two reasons: the first is that the camera's EVF is nearly 6 million dots and uses Leica glass in the viewing path. Secondly, the lens itself is very sharp and contrasty all the way to f2.0 so the performance of the lens enhances the look of the image in the finder compared to lenses that provide less performance. 

The lens is built with 12 elements in 9 groups. One element is an SLD (super low dispersion) and two others are ashpericals. The diaphragm has 9 blades and they are rounded to enhance bokeh. The closest focusing distance is 55cm (which, I think, it just over 20 inches). The lens has an extremely nice, external aperture ring which will also click into "A" at one end and the focusing ring is very workable for manual focusing. This is a lens that can be shot wide open with no real optical compromise. It may be the sharpest lens I own in the normal focal length range. For anything really close up the nod would have to go to the Sigma Art Series 70mm Macro. 

The color rendering of the lens, even when using Jpeg format, is right on the money. And the AF is quick as a bunny on speed being chased by zombie coyotes. In all it's about as perfect as a "long normal" lens gets and the whipped cream on the top is the very sensible price of $700. Pretty much Leica performance at a very non-Leica price. I should buy an extra in case they stop making this model.....

Which brings me to my one wish/request/plea to Sigma: 

Please, please, please make us a 50mm f2.0 lens with the same cosmetics and eye-watering performance as that of the 65mm. It would fly off the shelf. Well, I could guarantee that at least two of them would fly off the shelves because I'd snap them up fast. 

After my geriatric coffee drinker meets benevolent barista I set out to walk the streets somewhat fearful that someone at the coffee shop might be calling in a "silver alert" and put out an A.P.B. for a "lost senior." I'd hate to have been snatched off the street and delivered home before I got a few frames off. But, of course, nothing of the sort happened. I was free to wander unfettered. 

And in the process I found some really nice color images in front of my camera. Lots of colors for a gray and chilly day. 

Above: A Bob Dylan graphic on the wall of The Hole in the Wall. A night club we used to go to in the 1970's. It's still there, still open and still banging out tons of live music. Right on Guadalupe St. right where it's been since 1974.

And, in case you were worried, I was able to find my car at the end of my photo walk and find my way home. I even remembered to bring the camera back with me...

Hope your Sunday was eventful in good ways and non-eventful in potentially unpleasant ways. 

OT: Cold and rainy swim practice this morning. Bracing trip from the warm pool through the Arctic blast to the relative safely of the locker room.

 We're not burdened by weather that brings life to a complete halt. At least not yet. 

I woke up early today. I guess the combination of vitamin K2 and the recent time change are changing my sleep pattern. I read the news, drank fine coffee and ate a piece of toast.

Then I got in the car and headed over to swim practice. There was a thick head of steam coming off the pool. The difference between the 80° water and the 38° outside temperature made the scene look like a Hollywood set that was completely overwhelmed by a Mole Richardson fog machine. 

Our highly weather resistant coach, Kristen, came bundled for the weather and didn't miss a beat even when a cold rain started ramping up like buckshot. Her workout was written up on two white boards and I'm sure she wrote it on them in the dry refuge of the guard office since writing on wet white boards is....difficult.

We did a thousand yard warmup and then headed into the main sets which were a series 50 yard sprints on a descending interval followed by fast 100s. Over and over again. 

It's kinda fun to swim a workout in the cold with the added sensation of freezing rain hitting every exposed part of your body and head. We seemed, as a group, to be working a lot harder on our underwater streamlines (the push off the way at the turn and the underwater dolphin kick that goes with it) so we could stay submerged longer in the warmer water. 

It was easier to cheat by occasionally pulling on the lane line during backstroke today. Why? Because the pool fog coming up off the water made it hard for the coach to witness my transgressions at the other end of the pool. 

The most exciting part of the workout came at the end when we had to pull ourselves out of the comfortably warm water onto the near freezing deck and walk briskly through the wind gusts to the locker rooms. It is on days like this that the hot showers afterwards are so rewarding.

In a break from my usually healthy diet I stopped  at a local McDonald's drive thru and ordered a biscuit, egg, cheese and bacon breakfast sandwich and a large coffee. Not the best nutrition but insanely fun comfort food after 3,000 yards in mixed atmospheric conditions. I'll try to walk it off later in the day...

Feeling mildly virtuous today. 

It seems like it's going to be one of those days with steady, mild rain, ever dropping temperatures and generally gray skies. The perfect day for an afternoon nap.

R&R after a busy week. 

A gallery of black and white images from the 50mm f 0.95 while out walking.

Wide open at the closest focusing distance.

See the cool vignetting?

The 2nd St. mannequins get risqué.

And, alternately prudish.

It can be sharp enough at f2.0. But maybe never in the corners....

Abandon all hope ye who enter here...

 

Strange Lens arrives.

 

All of you who guessed that I purchased some esoteric, high speed Leica lens were incorrect. I throw money around carelessly sometimes but it's usually buying something like a large latté instead of a small one. Or filling the gas tank all the way up...

I was curious so I bought another TTArtisan lens. It's the 50mm f 0.95 lens that's made for APS-C crop cameras. I would never have bought it but I read a user report from a decent blogger who was "surprised" when he tried the lens on a full frame camera. He found ample vignetting around the edges but (importantly) it wasn't mechanical vignetting, rather it was just optical vignetting which looks better and, with a bit of elbow grease, might be somewhat mitigated in post. But there are no hard edges. The lens, when used wide open or near wide open is also very soft in most places outside the center third of the frame. I like weird stuff and I always like to try super-fast lenses. And it was firmly embedded in the cheap side of the B&H lens collection. I took the reviewer at his word and ordered one. 

It came quickly. But it came on the day of maximum work schedule intensity and I only just got the opportunity to play with it this afternoon. 

The lens is all metal, has a click stop aperture ring, was purchased in the L mount configuration, has eight elements in six groups and two of the elements are claimed to be "high index" elements. 

It's very small for such a fast lens but I guess it makes sense since it's only intended to cover the smaller frame size. It's also kind of strange looking as the focusing ring and aperture ring are deeply engraved with a grip worthy design.

You probably know that most of these Chinese lenses are completely manual focus, have no electronic linkage to the L mount cameras, don't record exif info, etc. You actually have to use your hand to focus the lens by turning the ring. The L mount cameras will work in aperture priority as well as manual exposure modes. Enable focus peaking if you'd like. 

The metal filter ring is a 58mm one. The lens cap is one of those screw in metal ones that seems to annoy everyone. You can source a plastic pinch cap just about anywhere for about $8 if your frustration with the two or three seconds it takes to screw or unscrew the cap boils over....

So, what do I think? This is not a lens to buy if you are in the camp of needing/wanting and insisting on a flawless, sharp across the frame performance level --- especially when used at its two widest apertures. It's just a non-starter for that. 

Me? I'm happy with the lens. I like the heavy vignetting wide open. I like the almost non-existent plane of focus when used at its big apertures. But I do have a consistent goal to become eccentric. This lens is a helpful push in that direction. 

The top image (self-portrait) as shot into mirrored glass at f 0.95 and is a pretty accurate reflection of the overall performance wide open. The lens actually sharpens up at the middle apertures and becomes like most other lenses; except for the remaining high level of vignetting. 

More of an Artsy Found Object lens than a Street Shooters Tool. You've been warned. And really, for the $200+ you could instead get yourself a really nice pair of shoes or a good, restaurant dinner for two. 

Can't wait to shoot some portraits with it.

It's been a long and busy week. Everything worked out pretty well. Lots of photographs were taken. No one was harmed. And I did step outside the safety net and use the weird new flashes...

 

Good Apple honoree at the Texas Appleseed Gala last night.

Having fun at the Four Seasons Hotel for the 22nd year in a row.

The honoree: A. Shonn Brown

When last I blogged I had just wrapped up a day of photographing small products and cables with a camera tethered to a computer, in my studio. We lit stuff, wrangled the camera, shared images on a laptop screen with two people from the client side, made clever adjustments and then committed the products to short term "memory" with the push of a virtual shutter button on the laptop screen. It was all very calm and mellow. After the clients left I backed up the images from our engagement in a zillion places, broke down the set and started packing for the next day's shoot. All part of the same assignment. 

On Wednesday I had a stack of photographic gear in a collection of cases sitting in the studio awaiting the 7:45 a.m. arrival of my assistant for the day. He was right on time and we got straight into loading the amazing Subaru Forester while talking over which gear we were going to use and what the run of the day looked like. The client's new H.Q. is about five miles from my location and, wonderfully, it's in the opposite direction from the morning traffic flow into downtown. We arrived 15 minutes early. Nice. 

I'd met the security officer for the building two days before, during the scouting, so we were waved right through and hopped into an elevator with a (severely) overloaded cart. The marketing people we were working with had commandeered a beautiful 6000 square foot meeting room with high ceilings to use as our working studio for the day. Since we had already decided on the location my assistant, Perry, and I started setting up lights. 

I used a nine foot wide, bright white muslin backdrop in the background lit by two Godox SL150Wii LED lights. The main light, thirty feet in front of the background, was a Nanlite FS300 LED fixture aimed into a 60 inch white umbrella with black backing (to control spill). The overall fill light was a Nanlite FS200 LED fixture firing into a 60 inch, white, shoot thru umbrella on the other side. 

Since every shot we did on Wednesday would include a person or people I chose to tether to an Atomos Ninja monitor instead of going the slower route of tethering to my laptop. The monitor was connected to a tripod mounted Leica SL2 and, for the most part we used the Leica 24-90mm zoom, supplementing when absolutely necessary, with the Sigma 70mm Macro Art lens.  Sometimes you just have to get in a little closer...

The SL2 provides the monitor with a live view image via the HDMI output so the client can watch the shot build in real time. In many situations the models had to hold small products in a very specific way and in a very specific area. After some trial and error with the spoken language we all realized that it would be easier and quicker just to turn the on set monitor around so the talent could see exactly where they needed to be, or where their hands needed to be to get the shot right. I highly recommend, at least on fast paced shoots with lots of moving parts, that commercial photographers reconsider their reliance on computer tethering if they don't need to deliver finished files on set at the time of the shoot. The HDMI monitors are capable of keeping up with the recycle rate of the camera without issue and the connection, at least with the Leica, is rock solid. Not always my experience with computer tethering....

Our make-up person, Jessica, was right on time and grabbed a corner of the room to set up her station. 

The client arrived right on the dot at 8:30 with a cart full of products and props and a sixteen page, color catalog of the images she needed us to create during the day. Super organized and with comps of the set-ups. Photographer's paradise!

The talent arrived and all three were exactly what we needed for this medical product shoot. We were able to get our first talent into make-up by around 9:15 and started photographing in earnest. With a great monitor solution on deck, a well organized client, super-professional talent and a great roadmap we were able to get the bulk of our model+product shots on white done in time to break for a late lunch. 

The client had tacos from an Austin favorite, TacoDeli, delivered (in quantity) and even had gluten free and nut free options for one member of the crew who has some allergies. We talked about our progress over lunch and mapped out our next steps. 

We moved our lighting and camera to a surgical operating theater that was set up as a catheter lab, complete with a lifelike dummy on the imaging table. This side of the shoot involved more interaction between the models who were portraying a doctor, a medical imaging tech and a patient. Our biggest task, beyond constructing authentic looking scenarios was to keep reflections from our multiple light sources off a large, reflective wall in the background. With some deft seat of the pants geometry my assistant was able to work the lights into position perfectly. 

We finished our last shot around 4:30 p,m. and started breaking down the gear, re-packing and doing our administrative paperwork with the talent. I spent a few minutes talking to the client about file delivery and post production, the assist and I packed up the car and headed back on the arduous 7 minute drive to the Visual Science Lab world H.Q. 

During the course of our shoot day we shot 1285 full resolution raw files which took up about 116 GBs of card space. The camera was configured to write to both card slots for simultaneous back-up. Nice to have an option to do that when the model costs were $$$$ and any reshoots for file-fuck-ups would come out of my pocket. We are now backed up across about six hard drives and I've temporarily stuck a set of compressed DNG files up on my WeTransfer.com account pending final client delivery. Can't be too safe. 

After I downloaded back up copies of the files I realized it was my turn (Wednesday is a designated day on the family calendar) to cook dinner. I punted. Headed over to Trader Joe's to get a bag salad and a chicken pot pie. Comfort food to make me happy during our damp cold snap, and my fatigue from two days of commercial shooting. 

After I got the dishes squared away I headed back out to the office to pack for two different shoots we had on tap for yesterday. The first was easy. One portrait on location (exterior) at a law firm.  I packed a Leica SL with the Panasonic 24-105mm zoom. Why not the Leica zoom? Because I wanted the extra 15mm in order to compress the background a bit more and I didn't feel like cropping after the fact. 

The lighting was one of the Godox AD200 Pro lights (flash) firing into a Westcott Rapid Box Octa. A nice and fast to set up 32 inch octa-box. I shot a bunch of raw images of a very nice attorney, repacked the car and headed home to start work on the post processing from the day before ( I also post processed the attorney shots and made a nifty online gallery for her....) and to re-pack yet again for the Thursday night gala for Texas Appleseed at the Four Seasons. 

This is a shoot that's the polar opposite of the controlled and high budget shoots we did earlier in the week. I show up in a suit and tie and weaved through the crowd of 400+ attorneys photographing couples, small groups and bigger groups during an hour long reception. We had an honoree and all of her friends and family to photograph as well as organization staff, board members, contributors, big dollar patrons and various law firm partners from Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio. I even met the judge who was presiding over the Alex Jones case. Wild. 

Lots of people, lots of loud conversations punctuated by clinking glassware and a constant flow of young, well-dressed legal associates and various non-profit staff. My "job" during the reception is to get as many of these "social" shots as possible. I've done this event, mostly pro bono, for 22 years in a row. I was originally talked into it by a nice friend who helped start the organization and she's corralled me in ever since. 

So, I flow through asking and gesturing for people to stop their conversations for a moment and turn their small groups toward the camera. I fire two quick frames to give me a better chance at getting a frame in which everyones' eyes are open and I smile warmly and thank them. Over and over and over again. 

I've used every imaginable camera, lens and flash combination you can think of over the decades. On the very first event, according to the brief account I wrote into a notebook back in 2000, I was using a couple of Leica M6 rangefinder cameras, a 35mm and a 50mm lens along with a Vivitar 285 flash on an off camera cord. I was shooting the event with Kodak's Ektapress 800 film and praying that the lab not screw it up.

Last night I took a Panasonic S5 and the 24-105mm lens, along with a dedicated TTL flash but I also took along the eccentric Leica SL, the Sigma 35mm f2.0 i-Series lens, and one of those delightfully retro looking Godox Lux Senior flashes. In fact, I brought two since the internal batteries are not interchangeable and I did know how long the flashes would go on one charge. I still don't know. 

Here's the flash:

There is no TTL automation and the auto flash is primitive and limited to one value. You can shoot automatically within a 12 foot limit at ISO 100 and f2.8, ISO 200 and f4.0, ISO 400 and f5.6, ISO 800 and f8.0, etc. 

I had wanted to find a current "automatic" flash for a couple of years. Not a used one from the 1970's and 1980's but a brand new product that "featured" a more limited feature set than other contemporary flashes. I might use the manual flash mode with power settings from time to time but I wanted a flash that I could use in that old automatic mode with various Leica cameras; which provide a very, very limited choice of good flash options. 

I selected ISO 800 and f8.0 for my automatic setting and gave the camera and flash a spin just before the reception opened. It seemed to work well so I defaulted to that combination for all of the social photos I took before we entered the main ballroom and started our program. The flash pattern vignettes a bit. With a 35mm lens it's not at all bad but on a wider lens you'd really see the corners go dark, dark, dark. 

I enabled the AF illuminator on the Leica and I was pretty shocked that, when coupled with a fast lens, the AF was fast, accurate and pretty much foolproof. The flash was accurate for the most part. If it erred it did so on the dark side and since I was shooting Leica raw files at a mild ISO being able to lift the exposures in post or to open shadows in post was a piece of cake. There were no irredeemable files in the mix. Nothing that was unsalvageable and, for the most part, the exposures were right in the half stop on either side safety zone. 

And, since we were working pretty close, 5 to 10 feet, the recycle was mostly spontaneous and the flash went on forever. A big win in my mind. I originally bought two of these. I thought they looked funny and whimsical and would be a conversation starter at events. Sadly, no one cares anymore about any permutation of camera gear. Nobody gave these odd little flash creatures a second look. 

As I stated up above I bought two because you can't switch out batteries. They take a while to charge (a couple hours at least). I figured that if I liked using them and wanted to use them for the entire event I should have a second copy to sub in if the battery in the first died. I also had a more traditional flash that takes double "A" batteries in the bag --- just in case. 

Just out of caution I switched out to the second flash when we moved into the on stage awards section of the program. Both worked flawlessly. Pretty amazing for $119 each. 

I got home after the event, kissed the spouse and headed out to the office to offload the memory cards. This morning I did a nose-to-the-grindstone post production session and sent last night's client an online gallery link from Smugmug.com and a full set of downloadable files from Wetransfer. It's all in the client's hands now. I hope it helps them with their marketing. 

After over two decades of this event I'm ready to hand the reins off to someone new. I'll let the client know and they can figure that part out. I don't want to become a referral site. 

Today? or what's left of it? A good, long walk with a camera, some unpacking and studio organization and mapping out an adventurous out-of-town trip over the upcoming holiday. Something that's just all about making photographs for myself. 

We have successfully completed our still life in studio assignment today. That means we get to progress to the next level... Oh wait. This is not a video game...

 

This photo has nothing to do with today's photo assignment. 

I took this at the Vancouver Art Gallery about a week and a half ago...

I worked harder yesterday than I did today. Maybe it just felt harder because I hate the process of cleaning and organizing. I used to have a full time assistant who would do all the stuff I disliked but the industry changed and we started working fewer and fewer days for more and more money and it became inefficient to have someone around all the time. Now we might only do five or six days of real work a month. Nothing for an assistant to do on the other 25 days. And no one to bill their time to. 

As usual, once the studio was cleaned up and cleared out I set up a shooting table and started putting up lights. I wanted to experiment shooting very, very small objects so I'd feel warmed up for today's shoot. 

I tethered the S5 to the laptop, launched Lumix Tether and experimented with all the settings. I wanted my client to have a technically seamless experience today. No crashes or flustered photographer. 

At a quarter of nine this morning I started the Krups coffee maker. At five till nine I pulled the muffins out of the oven. At nine o'clock I answered the door and greeted the art director. She was followed five minutes later by the marketing/traffic manager. We stood in the kitchen of my house and drank some coffee and ate some muffins. Everyone was very relaxed. 

We headed out to the studio. Everything was set up and the lights were already on. The art director handed me a 14 page shot list with about three or four images per page. There were illustrations of how each product should be photographed along with notes describing the products and details such as, "side shot, white background." 

A number of the products were less than an inch long in any dimension. Well, I'm not sure that's exactly true because there might be dimensions we are not aware of in which size takes on different meanings. But in our reality a lot of the parts of metal, medical devices were fairly small. I had the camera mounted on a side arm so I could position the camera directly over the camera for the shots that called for a straight, overhead shot. The camera was tethered so I could arrange the product or raise and lower the camera without having to look through the camera's EVF or rear screen. 

Tethering came in handy. We could take a shot, punch into the review image on the laptop screen and assess whether I had gotten good focus, or more importantly, if I had gotten focus well distributed across the shot. Kind of critical for some images where we were approaching a 1:1 magnification. 

We used blue masking tape to create little templates on the laptop screen in order to match angles and sizes when shooting very similar products. Getting the sizes to match is a big help for graphic designers in post. Since the camera was triggered by the program on the laptop I was able to set a 2 second self-timer delay and trigger the camera with no movement. And not flapping mirror to cause any unsharpness. The tripod and side arm are very stout and the floor under them is concrete so vibration, even at higher magnifications was undetectable. If it had been an issue the next step would have been to switch to using the electronic shutter mode. 

The art director kept the products flowing to me and kept track of our progress. The marketing manager took the already photographed products, repackaged them and put them back into their boxes. Our lighting was good, the lens spectacular (Sigma 70mm f2.8 Macro Art Lens) and we got into a good working rhythm checking the raw files from time to time in Preview to make sure we were getting good focus at 100%. 

After we got the products squared away the team called in the project manager and had him come by to arrange the compositions for more complex assemblages of catheters and surgical tools. He knew exactly what he wanted and we didn't have the "let's try it five different ways and see what we like best" syndrome stunting our progress. 

In the original scheduling of this campaign we set aside a full day for product photography in the studio but we finished up around 12:45 pm and the clients went to lunch. I was invited along but demurred since I had to strike the set and pack gear for a completely different type of shoot we're doing on location tomorrow. I suggested that if we did two lunches in a row they'd get tired of hearing my best stories twice. 

When we finished up the files were in place on the laptop's hard drive and on the two memory cards in the camera. I've since used Lightroom to ingest the files and back them up on two more hard drives. I've also made some small corrections to the files and wrote out a set of .DNG files to send on to the client via WeTransfer.com. 

It's mid-afternoon and I'm taking a break with a cup of Irish Breakfast tea. I like to change gears through the day and do different tasks. The act of writing a short blog helps me process in my mind the work I did earlier. It also helps me half way visualize what I'll do tomorrow with three models and a small crew under my direction. It should be an interesting day since I'm switching gears and cameras. 

I'm planning on using the big Leica tomorrow and "tethering" it to an Atomos HDMI monitor instead of to the laptop. There are several reasons to do so. One is speed. The other is pairing down the complexity. I may have it all wrong but the only consequences are, really, that the client might have to take a leap of faith and put some trust in the rear screen of my zany camera. We'll try to make sure it doesn't come to that. Batteries and cables abound. 

I'm almost packed for tomorrow and I'm glad I have an assistant coming. I'm packing five big light stands and that's a burden. There are also two cases of lights, a case of lenses and a case for cameras. I guess we'll just have to be okay with turning tomorrow's shooting into photographic theater. Lots of gear and sparkle to do what we used to do solo just a few years ago.

I had to talk myself out of getting another S5 and the free 50mm f1.8 Lumix lens.

I came to the conclusion that I could, in principle, justify owning different 

50mm lenses but owning two identical ones along with a growing collection 

of good and/or odd lenses was just one step too far. 

So I changed direction and bought a 50mm f.095 lens instead. It should arrive 

tomorrow. I'll shoot some stuff with it on Friday or Saturday. 

Not much will be in focus....

Gotta go. The client just sent over a style guide for tomorrow.

I guess I should read it in advance....

Oh. And B. just reminded me to pour out the leftover coffee and to clean

up the mess I left in the kitchen. That's fair.