When we last left our profligate protagonist he has just dropped yet more money into a camera he didn't need. But wanted. It was the Fuji 50Sii. Along with his early observations was an aside about not needing any new lenses. How quickly it all changes. But let me tell you the story...
I had two assignments yesterday. Both were for portraits of doctors. More specifically, radiologists. I decided that I'd give the new camera a try and so I set up the studio with a few flashes, a big soft box and all the accoutrement. I put the camera on a tripod and used the 35-70mm lens at 70mm. I cropped square which gives me a frame with 38 megapixels of resolution. Math tells us that you can just stand back a bit and crop and you'll have the equivalent of the focal length you were dreaming of. Just resist the temptation to get in close and fill the frame. We don't want to enlarge any noses needlessly...
The shoots both happened. One at 11 and one at 5:45. I pulled the raw files, did judicious processing in batches and sent along web galleries to my marketing department client. He was still in the office at 7:30 pm and acknowledged delivery.
I heard back from him late this morning. Both doctors loved their picks. I spent some time on each person's selection doing some enhancements and correcting things like rough skin and flyaway hairs (a little mentioned danger during a humid heat wave!). I sent them along just before I broke for lunch and got a message a little bit later from the art director. He was thrilled with the files, the delivery and the whole process.
The camera is great. I'll get a lot of use out of it. But where did this lens come from? Well, I never shoot jobs on a new (to me) camera without doing a test first and I did that on Monday evening using myself as a stand in. I liked the resulting files in spite of the mediocre model but I almost immediately realized that I'd want a longer lens if I was going to press this camera into service for portraits. Square? Yes. But a longer lens anyway. I looked at all the Fuji options on B&H and then I started reading about this particular TTArtisan 90mm f1.25 lens which comes in a Fuji G mount (and other mirrorless mounts as well). It's bizarre and eccentric but it really appealed to me. A super fast 90mm lens for MF? Never had one of those before.
I noticed that B&H had one in their used inventory for a whopping $400. About the price of a nice dinner out in Austin. (kidding. well...exaggerating. Slightly). I ordered it. I was too slow to have it here in time for the assignments but it came this afternoon and I started shooting test shots right away. I think the lens is lovely. I've got a few calls out to make portraits of friends so I can really sink my teeth into some "real world" tests but I have a feeling it's one of those lenses you either love or hate.
If you are looking for "compact and lightweight" as features you'll hate it. If you are looking for a slightly compressed, bokeh-rich, short telephoto that can put damn near anything in the background out of focus then this might just be the lens for you. It's nice for me. And no....I don't miss the autofocus. It's a tripod lens for me.
A lot of reviewers (trusted reviewer Richard Wong and others) have plenty of nice things to say about the optical performance but being influencers they feel duty bound to mention that, at f1.25, in the farthest corners of the test images, it is NOT razor sharp. But even the most jaded of them admit that it sharpens up by f4.0 and the majority of the frame looks great by f2.0 or f2.8. It's a portrait lens, not a science project...
The lens had me at 72mm equivalent. Ponder the math for a square format and it's more like an 85mm.
Right in the sweet spot for me. And with the big sensor there's still plenty of crop-potential.
I had coffee with a friend/VSL reader and fellow Leica loving photographer today. Sanjay Nasta. We met for coffee somewhere between his place and mine and spent nearly two hours catching up over coffee. The conversation was great, topical and close to home. The air conditioning was superb. And there we were with my Leica CL on the table and Sanjay's gorgeous Leica Q2M as well. For an hour or so all was right with the world. Well, the world inside Epoch Coffee.
It's so enjoyable to be face to face with the people who read, comment and share VSL with me. It's been a great month for getting out and socializing. If you are coming to Austin and you are interesting, drop me a line and we'll meet for coffee. Might be fun for both of us.
Swimming: Because my coach is smitten by the World Swimming Championships being covered by NBC from Japan she had the outrageous idea of making us swim all the events from the recent finals as part of our practice today. Including the relays. The 400 yard individual medley, with its 100 yards of butterfly, was too big an ask in an 85 degree pool (today's temperature) so we faked our way through it in our lane as best we could. Then she segued to relays...
On my leg of the 400 yard free relay I got soundly thrashed by a woman in the next lane over named Kristen. Sure, she's a decade and a half younger than me and was the women's top finisher one year at the International Ironman Competitions but it always hurts to get beat by a couple of body lengths. I'll try to do better tomorrow....
I'm sorry if I've let you down.
2 comments:
What I like about my TTArtisan lenses (17+23+35 on µ43 body) is that they are honest. With no way to communicate to the camera, the lens characteristics do not come with presets or instructions to correct flaws in-camera. I have a fine zoom or two for 'easy' shooting with all the bonus features, but I can carry dumb wide-mid primes and the Lumix 35-100/2.8 (or Pentax primes at fl>45mm) and be quite happy with the results - assuming I did not mess up my part!
Had a blast! Don’t tell the boss but I was late for a work meeting because our conversation was so much fun.
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