I thought it might be fun to show off all the variations of the stuff I shot yesterday. A stream of visual consciousness. One walk/one lens. An ongoing workshop.

 

My fave of the day.

Fuji GFX 50Sii +

Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZF.2 lens.

What I learned when I spent a couple hours photographing in the late afternoon with a Fuji medium format camera and an older lens designed to cover a 35mm format: If you want "character" in your lens then it's fun to try out some of these older, manual focus lenses but don't expect perfect performance across the bigger frame. Even when cropped to the square the CZ 50mm shows some vignetting. It's fixable in post but.... it's pretty heavy vignetting compared to even the Voigtlander 58mm f1.4.  The Zeiss lens also has more distortion. It's mostly simple barrel distortion and fixable with a +5 correction in the lens correction panel. So, if you are looking for perfect correction (which is probably a combination of computational correction and just having been designed for the larger sensor) you'll most likely want to look at Fuji's AF lenses designed specifically for this system. In my short experience lenses like the GFX 50mm f3.5 and the GFX 35-70mm f4.5-5.6 don't vignette and have far less distortion. 

But where's the fun in that? 

The "pros" of adapted 35mm lenses are: 1. You probably already own them. 2. They are much smaller and lighter; even with adapters. 3. Stopped down to f4.0 or f5.6 they are very sharp in any region outside the vignette zone. 4. They can be had dirt cheap. 5. They have a different look than the more modern lenses and that can match some people's preferences for images. Both in color and out of focus rendering. And 6. Did I mention that they can be had dirt cheap?

I had walked with the same camera and a different lens on the same street last week. At the time it was about 105° and humid. After ten minutes or so my hands were dripping with sweat. My endurance waned. My tolerance for failure dropped like a rock. And whenever the camera was exposed to direct sunlight I got an overheat warning --- if I left the camera on between shots.  

What a difference seven to ten degrees make. At 97° I felt almost cool. Dry hands. More cognitive focus. No fatigue and a greater willingness to backtrack to a location and try a shot in several different ways. It almost felt like being on vacation.  And we have a full week of high 90s to enjoy going forward. 

Last week I might have seen this powder blue pick-up truck and taken the easiest shot I could before moving on. Yesterday in the early evening I took my time to circle the truck and shoot from different angles and different directions. I was willing to wait for breaks in the traffic to go out into the street and get front shots. And generally I was more patient with both myself and the process. 

There's nothing earth shattering here. Just casual observations with a camera. But it's nice to be out where you can notice day to day changes for the better. And also notice how the variations in temperature can so affect one's approach to making photographs. 

Wall Glow.

The chair for the guy who controls the parking lot at Vespaio Restaurant.

Wall chaos. 

middle row. Second bulb from the front. That's where I put my focus.

OMG Shoes!

Prop in an optician's front window.

Prop in an optician's front window. Part two.

Lovely focus fall off from front to back.

Stetson hats. 

A retreat back to the "high comfort" of the REI Bucket Hat. At half the weight. But with 150% of the charm...