Great Response to Tuesday's invitation to share information about each other. I wish there was a way on Blogger to "pin" a post up at the top of the main page. But there isn't. I'll keep posting comments to that post as long as the comments keep coming. Thanks to everyone!!!

 

Birkenstock Atacamas in action. 

I like Birkenstocks and now that I've attained full adulthood I have 

no fear of even wearing them in cooler weather with wool socks. but...

I love the way Birkenstock's original sandals feel on my feet. The arch support, the footbed, in fact, just about everything is perfect. But the originals have one big issue that bugged me. My two pairs of Arizonas have very thin and wimpy soles on them. The bottom tread. It's definitely a sandal that's made for indoor use. On tile, on carpet and on hardwood floors they are very much in their element. But if you take them outside and walk on roadways, sidewalks, and over any rough ground you'll wear out the bottom tread within a month. At least I will. I had almost given up on considering wearing my comfy originals past the threshold of the front door of my house --- which is sad. But do you really want to blast through a pair of $160 sandals on a monthly basis? Seems a bit wasteful to me.

Austin is a weird place for shoes. It's rare we need or want to wear big, insulated hiking boots and there are so few places left anymore to wear those bespoke, formal suits and fine oxfords and still fit in Austin Fashion Wise. We've got a couple months of comfortable, temperate weather and then most of the Summer, at least till November, we're dealing with hot, sweaty, sticky weather. The kinds that begs for short pants, thin, moisture wicking shirts and almost bare feet. Or at least feet exposed to air flow...

Of course you can't really go barefoot as the pavement everywhere is hot enough to quickly cook pancakes on. You wouldn't make it two blocks without third degree burns on the bottoms of your feet. So the solution for the heat, humidity and just plain awfulness of feet confined to shoes is sandals. I have all manner of other brands but the Birks are the most luxurious. The "Leica" of ventilated footwear. 

In anticipation of the upcoming Summer I started doing research and found that Birkenstock has introduced a bunch of new product with ---  much more rugged and durable soles. Big tread. As thick as the grippy tread on the bottoms of my Keen hiking shoes. Oh joy! I bought the first version they introduced. They are called Atacamas. They don't have the famous suede leather over cork footbed. They are made of some sort of composite materials. But they work, and were comfortable enough for me to have done a handful of three to four miles walks through the city. I'd put a link to them but I don't want to rob you of the joy of doing your own research. 

Yesterday I circled back to the Birkenstock website to find yet another product that melds the best of the Atacamas with the best of the traditional sandals. It's called the "Arizona Rugged." Oiled leather uppers, tranditional suede leather footbed but with a much more rugged bottom. Advertised as an outdoor, adventure shoe. I'll be ordering a pair of these as well since the suede footbed insole will most likely be more comfortable than the non-porou, poly material of the Atacama. Sadly though, they are about $25 more. 

The Atacamas are perfect for wet environments (going to the pool) and getting caught in the rain since they won't be bothered by water. That's the biggest trade off. The Arizona Ruggeds will eventually experience deteriorated cork inner soles if you don't take pains to wax the surfaces regularly.

So, what the heck does this have to do with photography? Well... happy feet make for happier photographers and un-sore feet mean more potential ground covered during photo walks. The rationale works for me. And...they are made in Germany. I can hardly wait for the Leica Editions. Where to put the red dot???

So, yesterday, after all my office chores were done, I slipped into my Atacamas and headed downtown to make some more Carl Zeiss empowered photographs. I was out to see how well the colors and the general contrast of the Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f1.4 ZF.2 matched up with the 28mm and 35mm CZ Biogons. But what makes visual lens testing a bit of a challenge is the changing quality of light from day to day. 

With the two Biogons I was making photographs on bright, sunny days. Whereas yesterday it was pre-stormy, grey and sodden. And cloud cover, etc. sucks the saturation and contrast right out of most images. I decided to give it a go anyway. After all, I was there with a camera and lens in hand. 

There is a family resemblance between all three of the lenses. They render subjects a bit differently than the Voigtlander lenses. A bit more contrast and slightly harder tonalities. And the Zeiss lenses are just a bit cooler in color than the Vs. I like the idea of tromping around with fixed sets of lenses. One day might call for the 40mm and 58mm Voigtlanders as a nice duo for uncrowded urban shooting while the Zeiss trio might shine in a more crowded space. 

Oh. And I heard or read something from a street photographer that interested me a lot this past week. He was talking about what lenses he uses for street photography (what I might call 'urban landscapes') and he suggested that a 28mm is a good lens for crowded and tightly configured spaces like the ones he finds in Asia. Think Hong Kong. Think Tokyo. Places where there is a lot of sidewalk traffic and less space to back up. 

His choice for the spread out cities of North America (think Austin, Vancouver, Seattle) is a 50mm because that focal length tends to compress space better. And in Austin there is nearly always room to back up...

Now I'm thinking of my lens groupings by their real potential. The 40 and 58mm Voigtlanders for general use in spread out cities. The 28mm and 35mm for crowded cities and smaller spreads. Adding the 50mm CZ for those times when a classic portrait is called for. I know it's a bit short for a real classic portrait but that's why the photo gods inventing judicious cropping. I haven't been to London since the 1990s. Is it a crowded space or a wide space? I don't remember.  Let me know if you can...

At any rate here are some images I shot yesterday. I was underwhelmed with everything so it's fine with me if you are too. I'll toss some captions in for fun. 

50mm f1.4. All lenses are good-to-great at f8.0. This one is no exception.

The 50mm has some barrel distortion but very little vignetting, even wide open.

And the sharpness is deceiving. The depth of field is so thin that you have to 

hunt for what's in focus to make any sort of accurate assessment. 

Hot. Humid. And with the sun peaking out just enough to make

sunscreen desirable but annoying. Nice colors though. 

50mm focused as close as I could. Stopped down to f2

Fascinated by fast food buildings. Not that they make fast food there but 

it seems the construction is aimed more at getting the stuff up quick but ignoring 

any imperative to make the buildings at all attractive. Or interesting. Or both.

50mm. This is one of those images with a lot of sharp detail that would 

probably look its best enlarged quite a bit. There's a lot in the frame; especially the right hand side building, and the sky is interesting to me as well. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't translate well 

to a small screen. Now I'm starting to sound like MJ...

downtown Austin is now commissioning artists to paint original work (not graffiti) on

all the downtown utility boxes and traffic light control boxes. It's a nice touch. 

I'm not always a fan of all styles but there is something for just about 

everyone. 

I saw this just after reading JC's comment about how many hundreds and hundreds of 

real photographs he found while looking though a copy of Architectural Digest Magazine. 

I get that there are still a lot of print magazines. And most of them still have photographs. 

But as a percentage of overall creative content I judge most of them to be outliers aimed at 

a certain limited range of generations and certainly at higher income demographics. 

I think the young man wearing this t-shirt might agree. 

I disagree a bit with JC on this. I think the robots have us in their sights.