On the outskirts of the UT Austin campus. Originated as Jpegs. Large Jpegs.
Handheld. Jpeg. f4.0, etc.,etc.
Whenever a Leica product is reviewed or mentioned on Digital Photo Review's website several people will write a comment saying how well designed or beautifully designed the product is. Then, without fail, several commenters will make the statement that they Never Consider aesthetics or design when shopping for a car, an appliance, or a camera. I feel sorry for people who are incapable of seeing good aesthetic design as a valued feature in the material goods they choose to bring into their lives and use daily for years; maybe decades. It just doesn't make sense. A preference for good design is one of the things that differentiates us from robots. Or straight-line thinkers.
Sadly, I think I've spent far, far too long having to budget pennies and watch expenses. Now that I can actually afford to buy myself a wasteful but fun camera I find myself worried about the consequences of rough handling. Edge wear on the bottom edges of the camera from putting it down on rock walls and setting it on the pavement. Dings and paint chipping from bumps and scrapes. If I was really wealthy none of these things might bother me. If my camera got too scratched up (and if I cared about that kind of wear) I'd just trade it in on a new one. But my brain certainly isn't operating in that lofty, elitist sphere most of the time.
I thought I'd do what most paranoid, luxury camera owners do and try to protect the object as well as possible. To that end I started researching half cases. Half cases are what we old timers would recognize as the bottom halves of leather "every-ready" cases that came packaged or were available as protective, fitted cases for cameras. You may also know them as "Never Ready Cases." Camera makers supplied versions for each of their SLR cameras back in the 1970s. Something that vanished completely for a while but which are being resurrected for cameras now by high end camera makers and also many third party companies. A "half case" protects the part of a camera that seems to get the most incidental damage. The bottom plate and the bottom corners and edges of a camera.
I started out by looking to see what Leica might have for me and found that they make a nice half case for the Q2 camera but for the princely sum of $220. A bit rich, I thought, for something that used to come as standard for even most most base level interchangeable lens cameras from the past... So I researched further on one of my favorite online sites for a seller of all things Leica. Much to my shock, horror and amusement one can spend $350, $450 and up to $950 to purchase a small, leather half case from a number of companies which specialize in Leica cases, bags and straps. I want protection for my new camera but don't feel as though that protection should cost more than the monthly payment on a Tesla.
With my cheapness on full display I headed for the refuge of every bored bargain hunter: Amazon. There I found an assortment of Leica Q2 half cases which ranged in price from $17..95 up to and including the nose bleed options from Leica. Amazon, wisely, seems to have drawn the line at full on absurdity and are not currently helping to move many of the "over $500" half cases. And I have to say that unless the materials include leather found on some exotic off-world expeditions held together with unicorn mane threading I just can't see the difference in value of a luxe Leica branded case and any of the more "esoteric" cases.
I took a chance and ordered a Mega-Gear branded case for a whopping, eye-watering $28. Free shipping with Prime. The case arrived quickly as it did not require armed guards to ensure its safe delivery. The case looked just fine, smelled like real leather and also came with a leather strap. It fit snuggly on the first try but over the last few days has loosened up and feels more naturally fitted now. There are little trap doors on the bottom that allow one to change the battery and SD card without full case removal. The trap door works well on the battery side but is a bit misaligned on the SD card side. Nothing that can't be fixed with a little work and the sharp edge of a Kershaw Leek pocket knife blade. But the case does what I wanted it for quite well; it creates a good, stiff, resilient barrier between the sweet black anodized body of the camera and the harsh chaos of the outside world.
I might try one more case in the $60 range but then again I may just decide to be happy with this one. It does the job. The step up might do the job with a slightly better fit...
Certainly I'm opening up myself here to the scathing rebuke of some "witty" commenter who will no doubt contrast my willingness to "overspend" on a camera ("should have gotten a Sony and a bag full of lenses!") but be too cheap to spend Leica-Style money on a case for the same. Let it fly. I agree. I can only blame this particular shortcoming on being raised by depression era parents who thought things like college educations for their kids and retirement accounts were higher priorities...
Once I solved my equation concerning a good compromise for keeping the body of the camera in good shape it occurred to me that I should also depart from my usual, "No gratuitous use of non-essential lens filters" stance and figure out how to protect what is probably the most expensive part of this expensive camera; the lens.
My usual take on lenses is that they are replaceable, meant to be used naked, and perform best with the fewest added air glass interfaces. Meaning no filters. Especially cheap filters. The urge to toss a "protection" filter on every lens, from crappy kit lens to weird third party optical catastrophe lenses bugs me. But as I started to ponder this use case a thought made it through my thick skull and I realized that this camera was a complete system with a non-removable lens and one scratch or chip on the front surface of the lens could be financial armageddon. I can't even guesstimate the cost of replacing a Leica front lens element on a Q2 but I know it would not be cheap, reasonable, slightly expensive or even "a bit pricey."
I shoot out in the elements a lot so I ordered a high quality 49mm filter and put it on the front of the lens ASAP. So now....just now....I'm ready to venture out into today's mist and take a few shots with this pampered German art piece. I hope it's worth all the trouble.
And.....yes.....I am crazy enough after shooting with the Q2 for only one weekend.....to actually be considering what kinds of things I could also do with a Q2 Monochrom. But I'll have to wait for a full recovery of the stock market before I even begin to go down that road...and my crystal ball is hazy there.
Over time I'm sure my prissiness about the "expensive camera" will wear off and I'll use it the way I've always used cameras. And stop babying it. That was the trajectory with the SL2 and now I consider it in the same light as my old and crusty SL cameras. Everything hits its equilibrium in time.
I was over at Will's house on Friday. We were sitting in his enormous yard just a quarter mile or so from Zilker Park in Austin, Texas. Mark was there with us too. Mark's not a photographer per se. He spent most of his career as an emergency room doctor. But here we were watching the December sun drop down and blur into the horizon's haze, drinking glasses of wine and talking about life. How to retire. How to stay young. How to persevere doing the stuff you love.
Will and I have known each other since the late 1970's when we were both at the University of Texas at Austin. He was in the Photojournalism school and I was vacillating, year by year, between an engineering college and the English department. Our common interest from the outset was photography.
Will has spent the last 45s pursuing magazine editorial work. He beat me to St. Petersburg, Russia and Moscow by over a decade. He's been to exotic places like Azerbaijan. He's spent time in central Mexico and also spent more Summers vacationing with his family in the South of France.
In some ways he is my polar opposite. He cares exclusively about the photographs. The finals. The prints. He is bored and unengaged by camera gear. For years he shot amazing stuff with an ancient Olympus RD35 film camera. It was a cheap compact camera. He loved it because he could sync flash at any shutter speed. That was all he cared about. I've never seen him with a Leica unless he was trying to act curious about some new camera I was smitten with in the moment. He's probably spent $10 on cameras and lenses for every $100 I've spent over the years....
I've learned so much from Will. He took me on a shoot about Mesquite furniture done for a shelter magazine and I watched him direct ultra-rich home owners with exactly the same attitude he used with car mechanics, restaurant workers and kid models. He brought me along on an assignment for a famous business magazine when he needed a last minute assistant. We were going to photograph the CEO of an up and coming (and now huge) Austin-based computer maker. I watched as the marketing director for the company tried to tell him how he wanted the shot to look and what should be in the background. Will said "no" and the marketing guy for the computer maker stuck his heels in and said that his suggestion was the way the photo was going to go.
Will very calmly starting packing the lights and cameras up and I helped him. The subject of the article and his marketing guy were dumbfounded. They asked Will why he was packing up. He responded with a no nonsense delivery. He told them he didn't work for them. He worked for the magazine and the magazine hired him for his point of view; not theirs. If the computer guys didn't want a spread about their fast growing company in one of the world's biggest business magazines that was fine with him. They folded on the spot and Will did the job exactly the way he wanted to. It was an amazingly powerful lesson for me. I've used what I've learned from Will on nearly every shoot I've done since.
He is brilliant, curious, always well informed and he understands his working techniques forward and backward.
I'm sad that younger photographers aren't getting the opportunity to work with people like Will now. They learn what they think they need to learn from YouTubers like Peter McKinnon and legions like him. It's at best superficial knowledge created mostly in the service of selling more camera gear. Not making art. I'm lucky to know people like Will and from time to time I've been able to help him with snippets of post processing techniques or equipment recommendations. But he sure didn't need me to tell him how to work a band when we shot a rushed shoot with the B-52s. Or countless other celebs. His secret? He treats them like everyone else. And he treats each shoot like he is the final arbiter of.........everything in the frame.
We had a nice sunset happy hour. He's a great host. And his biggest secret? He genuinely likes and respects almost everyone he meets. He's the definition of a highly talented artist who is at the same time non-judgmental. Nice guy. Seems to finish ahead of the pack most of the time.
It was one in a decade long series of casual conversations with good friends. What a holiday gift!
Life is short. If we're lucky we get to buy and play with whatever we want.
I've been working on reducing the camera inventory over the course of this year. I wanted to get rid of excessive duplication (also referred to as "redundancy" or "back-up" gear) and I was strongly motivated to get rid of different systems with different menus and different batteries. For someone who spent a large part of his career juggling different cameras for different work scenarios it took time for me to get comfortable with winnowing stuff down and being rational (or as rational as possible....) about it.
I wrote a tongue-in-cheek piece about getting a new Leica Q2 yesterday but what I didn't mention was that I've sold off, over the last couple of months, five cameras from other systems and at least ten lenses. Gone. Out the door. I've gifted a few lighting units and have given away other peripherals.
Once I started shooting with Leica cameras I decided that I'd pare down as much as possible to only that family's products because it's nice to have consistency and it's nice to have all of the lenses be interchangeable; even between the APS-C Leica CLs and the full frame SLx cameras.
At this point I only have two non-Leica cameras left. One is the Panasonic S5 which is too useful to part with. It's a go-to camera for video work and also a great camera for use with dedicated, on-camera, TTL flash work. Think galas, social events, etc. But I'm not in a hurry to part with it until I find a bullet-proof on-camera flash system that works across the Leica universe.
The other camera is the eccentric, wonderful, quirky but capable of beautiful files --- Sigma fp.
Both the fp and the S5 use all the L mount lenses interchangeably and both are worth so little as trade-ins or sellable products that it just makes economic sense to keep them around. And a bonus feature of the Sigma fp is that it takes the same batteries as the two Leica CLs. Nice. Swappable. Wish the S5 could use Leica batteries; or even better, that Leicas could use S5 batteries...
Since I sold my two Fuji X100V cameras last December I've been casually looking around for the right camera to replace them. A couple of times I almost back-slid to the Fujis but they have been unavailable for so long that my interest in them collapsed altogether. The Q2 has been on my radar for a couple of years now but I never quite figured out if the camera would work for me; both for jobs and financially.
But selling off more and more cameras and lenses made the purchase at least fiscally do-able. So I took the plunge.
Why that camera? Because it makes sense considering the direction in which I'm pushing my primary working cameras. It tucks into the overall system quite nicely. And, as with the Sigma fp and the CLs, it takes the same battery as the SL and SL2 cameras. I can see using it in concert with the bigger cameras when I want something quick and no nonsense while on assignment.
I've often argued against the Q2 because I'm not a big fan of the 28mm focal length and that's what you get, permanently installed, on a Q2. But a quick tutorial with a friend who was already a Q2 owner showed me just how well the camera works with the zoom-in feature. It's really a well done work around for a fixed focal length. I can choose to shoot in a 35mm A.O.V. space and still come away with files that are over 30 megapixels in resolution. While the 50mm frame lines are smaller that crop too is usable and gives one about 15 megapixels of resolution.
But the features I like best are the sharpness and performance of the Leica lens, the color science, the sensor (which I think it shares with the SL2) and the uniformity of the menu with the SL2 --- which is my most used camera for $$$ work. A well designed menu doesn't get the gushing credit that things like super snappy AF do but in my mind is a primary benefit for a camera --- and by extension, a system.
The Q2 is much smaller and lighter than my SLx cameras so it's easier to always have around. I'm also happy with the I.P. 52 weather resistance rating and look forward to moments of nonchalant indifference when the rain starts to pour down.
But the biggest selling point is the image quality.
I wanted to buy a leather half case to protect the bottom of the camera --- since that part gets set down on rough surfaces sometimes when we're all moving quickly. I looked at a version of a leather half case at a Leica store and was shocked (really --- shocked) to see a price of $350. I opted for one advertised on Amazon and the cost was $34. I'd ordered one before for the TL2 and it was perfectly fine and fit well. Some things you really don't need to splurge on....
One more thing. Just because a camera is made by Leica doesn't mean it can't be voted off the island.
Just recently I mini-celebrated (nice coffee) the departure of my most ill-advised Leica camera purchase. Yes, the Leica TL2 is now someone else's interface nightmare. Gone and at a $ loss. But I'm happy just to see it go. I'm sure there are many who bond with the camera and the cellphone-like menu system but the camera was just a non-starter for me. I'm touchscreen illiterate. And when you don't look forward to using something it's time to let it go. Unwanted cameras just take up space in the drawer and in your brain. Once gone you can use the space for something better.....or just enjoy the space itself.
It was an interesting attempt by a company that was brave enough to take chances. But it should never have left the lab. At least not before a good test run in the hands of many ham-fisted photographers....
Several readers have asked if I considered the Q2 Monochrom when making my purchase but to be truthful it never crossed my mind. I find the controls in camera (Profile: Monochrom HC) and the breathtaking flexibility of Adobe's Lightroom all I need to create B&W images that match the style I like.
I would love (not really) to write a series of blog posts about the 20+ years I spent in my own commercial darkroom souping film, making contact sheets, printing on fiber based paper, testing sodium vapor safe lights, toning in selenium solutions, using Spotone and tiny brushes to dust spot prints, fixer staining many beautiful shirts and pairs of pants, pouring chemicals down the sink, and so much more but I find the whole subject .... incredibly boring. Like describing to someone how to dig a hole with a shovel, fill the hole with dollar bills, set them on fire and the cover the ashes with the dirt.
Many, many years ago, when I worked in advertising, we used to have to order type from a service for print ad production. When the type (on sheets of paper like material) came the leading and spacing wasn't always perfect and we used a waxer for adhesion on the backside of the page of type and then carefully cut some words out letter by letter and aligned them and pressed them onto the boards we sent to the printers. It was careful, time consuming work but it was always just cutting type out with a sharp blade and repositioning it to make the type look better. Once we were able to kern and space type on our computers we never had the misplaced nostalgia to go back and heat up the waxers and hunch over a drafting table lining stuff up sticky type with a Mayline. Never.
That's about how I feel when I see people waxing sentimental about the actual drudgery that was darkroom work. We only really cared about the prints. The final piece of art. How we got there wasn't the source of joy. It was getting out of the darkroom alive and with a nice print in our hands that was the happy part.
Going backwards? Not on your life!
So, what's on your holiday list of "most wanted" stuff? And please don't say, "Dektol."
Finally, swimming. We have a mean coach on Tuesdays and Thursdays but we're growing to like and respect her. She upset our routine by making us lean into all four strokes and also to up the effort level in our workouts. Not necessarily more distance but a lot more speed work. Keeping those heart rates over 150.... at least mine...
Today, by her declaration, was I.M. day. It stands for individual medley. There are three races in the Olympics that are I.M. The 200 meter I.M. the 400 meter I.M. and the 400 I.M. relay. In each the first quarter is butterfly, the next quarter is backstroke, then breaststroke and finally freestyle. In the 400 (non-relay) the first 100 yards is the killer. It's 100 yards or meters of butterfly stroke --- which most people could not finish for any reward. It's too hard to do for occasional swimmers... Even fit ones. And then the turn. And then right into backstroke, etc.
Our workout today consisted of mostly I.M. sets but also three main subsets that concentrated on one main stroke for each. You have not started out your morning under physical duress until you've knocked out five or six hundred yards of butterfly. It's just a whole different thing. In fact, I've been sitting here typing this post just to rest up and have the energy to get up and go find another cup of life-giving coffee....
Just a warning if you were planning to come to Jen's 8 a.m. workout next Thursday.
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