I really like compact cameras with fixed lenses. Big formats, small formats, zooms or fixed primes. They're all so different from our "serious" cameras...

Last shot of the evening on Friday. Q2.

Correctly or incorrectly I judge how popular cameras are by how hard it is to buy one new. In a box. From a retailer. New mirrorless, interchangeable cameras from Leica, Panasonic, Sony, Nikon and Canon all seem to be widely available right now. Maybe they're tough to get just after launch but the supply seems to catch up with demand for all but the most popular, and the cameras perceived to be actually ground-breaking; at least at the time of launch. 

For a couple of months now I've been feeling like I made a mistake getting rid of both of my Fuji X100V cameras near the end of 2021. At the time I really wasn't getting much use from them and I had a friend who really wanted one of them. With its twin missing the other X100V became part of one of a series of trade deals. My rationale for selling them at the time was that they were plentiful; available, and if I wanted to I could replace them with ease. My cursory searches through the biggest dealers' websites over the last 60 days proved me wrong. Brand new X100V cameras seem to have vanished from the market. The are "back-ordered" or have become "special order" items. I called several retailers to check on this inventory mystery and each one had the same story: the new cameras are trickling in by ones and twos from Fuji and if I want one I need to put myself on the retailer's waiting list. I asked how long the list might be and all the people who were willing to own up to the truth said their lists were anywhere from the hundreds to, in one case, over a thousand people. Wow. Just wow. 

For a number of reasons the Fuji X100V is both a super high demand item and, at the same time, a proverbial unicorn. Oh...you can buy one if you want. Probably right now. Today. It's easy. Just go online to Ebay and you'll find sellers moving the cameras for insane prices. From $2,500 to $3,500 and along with the high prices you'll also have to navigate the dicey waters of private sellers, some with dubious ratings... Caveat Emptor, for sure. These cameras have been flogged relentlessly on review sites, hence their current popularity. Another reason to hate on social media... (and my own blog...).

The Fuji X100V is a really nice $1399 camera but it's kind of NOT a bargain or even a good deal, slightly used, at $2,500. For a bit more you could pick up a nice, but also used Leica Q. The original full frame, 24 megapixel model. And having played with both the Leica is decidedly nicer. But it's not just Fuji's compact, APS-C fixed lens X100V that's gone AWOL. Once I realized that the Fuji product wasn't destined to be in my immediate future I started looking around at other potentially fun compact cameras. Just something small and easy to carry around when I'm working on trying to be "casual" about my photography hobby. 

I decided I'd pick up a Panasonic LX100mk2 instead. Or, I might splash out and buy the same camera in Leica trim for a little bit more; a D-Lux 7 for the same price at the above mentioned Fuji. Either one would have worked for me but..... both are back-ordered. Adorama says until mid to late April. One by one I worked my way through the small field of ultra cool compact cameras like the Ricoh GR3x only to find that the "cool" models in nearly every line are out of stock, back-ordered or otherwise missing in action. 

While I have always liked bigger and more potent cameras for work, and almost always cameras with interchangeable lenses, I've also usually had an inexpensive, compact camera to carry along as well. Ten years ago it was the Canon G10 followed a few years later by the G15 and the G16. All really good variations on the compact theme. On a bet I actually illustrated one of my books, "Photographic Lighting Equipment" almost exclusively with the CCD sensor-ed G10. It did not disappoint --- but I mostly used it in a counter-intuitive way= anchored to a tripod.

From 2002 to 2013-15 there was a mad rush made by consumers in one of two directions. One group decided to buy into the new, digital camera DSLR hysteria and abandoned their usual point-and-shoot camera to embrace APS-C and then full frame cameras. These replaced legions of compact cameras on kid's soccer fields, at family gatherings and on big vacations. All of sudden the market for premium compacts dropped like a rock. The other group of consumers, beginning around 2008-9, decided that the performance of the ever-ready cameras in their mobile phones were completely able to take over the tasks once handled by compact cameras and, in a burst of freeing themselves from the tyranny of carrying multiple devices they dropped their demand for stand alone compacts and embraced photo-by-phone. 

Manufacturers, being logical and data grounded, looked at the plummeting sales numbers and bailed nearly wholesale from the entire market segment of the compact camera. But a new group of people, driven by a recent trend with an almost viral spread, have been snapping up the old compacts for, ta-da! Street Photography. Which we used to just call....photography. 

So, camera makers shut down production, new Street Photographers soak up the really cool used compact cameras and now we're kind of stuck. This happened when compact film camera sales first started to decline. The price of everyone's favorite, the Canon Canonet QL17mk3 took off like a rocket. It was a camera that never retailed for more than about $150 which started selling for three and four hundred dollars used. Looking at that camera now I judge that those buyers of used Canonets actually got bargains. An all metal, all mechanical body with an attached 40mm f1.7 rangefinder coupled lens, able to flash sync at all shutter speeds and featuring a quick load (the QL in QL) function that made loading film easy and foolproof. 

If Canon launched that camera today and updated the meter and battery they could probably become the newest back-ordered "photographic miracle" machine at around $1,000 a pop. It was that popular. An improved, updated version that preserved the original DNA and features would be an instant classic. Brand the old 40mm lens as an L lens and ..... well, I can only conjecture. 

But my point is that the market changed for a while and the huge base of compacts disappeared as quickly as Walmart and Costco could remainder them. 

But I want one. 

Why? With a camera like the G15 I can toss it in a jacket pocket, or in one of those huge pockets that used to decorate David Hobby's cargo shorts, and not really have to think about it. I could pull it out and make wonderful images without caring too much and without the pervasive ego addition of status symbol projection. Use it on the street and it would be hard for anyone to take me seriously. Accidentally drop it in a vat of hot coffee and I wouldn't cry about the loss...too much. 

I recently bought a Leica Q2. It's a formidable camera. But it's in no way really compact in the way the old point and shoots were. If you want to put that sucker in a pocket you'll need to pull your old London Fog trench coat out of the closet and clear the gum wrappers and Kleenex out of the pockets. The Q2 takes amazing photos but it more a fixed lens variation on the Leica Ms which are also not "pocketable" or even light to carry around. 

While I was pining for the Fuji X100V I started to remember that, winter jackets aside, (we only get to use them for about a month each year in Central Texas) we don't have pockets with enough cubic centimeters to accommodate one of them either. That's what led me down the path to cameras like the Lumix LX100ii. It's just small enough to bring along surreptitiously, streamlined-ly, under the radar. And, if the reviews are true it is a really good photograph making product with a nice zoom lens that covers a useful range of angles of view. 

Yes, I've looked at the Sony RX100xxxx variants but they are finnicky to use. Buttons too small. Menus to torturous. And while the one inch sensors are good the prices for the cameras are out of touch with my side of the market. 

I looked around the retail space again today and decided to entertain myself for the foreseeable future with the existing Leica Q2. I suspect that Leica will be launching a new model sometime soon. If so I have just a few suggestions for them. I think they would do well to make two models and to provide two different fixed focal lengths. The 28mm seems to work well for a lot of people but I'm sure there are some like me who would love to see a 50mm version of the camera. I would buy one in a heartbeat. With a digital zoom range up to 90 or 100mm (with a drop in resolution) I'd be in semi-compact camera heaven. Another suggested change would be to put a little front grip into the actual body design to make holding the camera more of a science and less of an aftermarket hardware art project. It's a test of one's optimism about the future to drop almost $6,000 on a camera but it's just a trial to complete the camera with aftermarket thumb grips and front hand grips. The German engineers have hands. They should try holding their product for a day to see just where it might be improved. 

If the Q3 launches with no change to the body them I'm weighing starting a company to make a "KirkTuck" branded selection of grips and gadgets to hang off the resulting camera. If Oberwerth can make a $495 half case for a Q2 I'm sure there are some out there that might pay $300 for an "exclusive" thumb grip. It will come in quite a nice box....

Now that we've moved from a final viewing target being a screen instead of paper prints (for the vast majority of people) most of the camera on offer are dramatic overkill. The compacts should see a revival as the offer a good middle ground between the lust and passion for full frame and the parsimonious and unimaginative dependence on a phone with which to make art. Price them well and we might be able to convince every Sony A9 user, Nikon Ultra ZXX user, and even died in the wool Leica SL users to pick up a pint size camera for those "in between" moments. Easier to handle at cocktail parties and on trail runs. Cheap enough to have one to leave in the car...

I took the Leica Q2 out with me late Friday afternoon. Yes, it was equipped with a non-Kirk branded thumb grip and a non-Kirk branded hand grip. It had a strap. It weighs more than nothing. I had the extra battery in my pocket. I liked almost everything about the shooting experience except that I couldn't just fit it into my jacket pocket. I'd like to have something smaller just for times like that. 

On the other hand I really liked the photos I was able to take. I'll caption a few of them.

Two work notes. First, my long time partner/spouse/wife/best friend won a silver ADDY award for her design work, done almost a year ago, for a brochure. Her creative director texted her from the awards show Friday night. He was delighted. It's funny because it was the last design project she did for a large final client before retiring. I guess it's the classic situation of leaving on a high note. 

I also did two work projects this week, making environmental portraits for both a law firm and a tech firm. One each. The newsy piece is that I was bored about the projects until I decided to mix things up by tossing the big, full frame cameras back in a drawer and taking along only the Leica CL, APS-C cameras. In both cases I used one of the cameras with the Sigma 65mm f2.0 lens. The combination results in an angle of view similar to a 100mm lens on a full frame camera. The lens is massively sharp even at f2.0 so I decided to use it there. I was very pleased with the final results --- as were the clients. Sometime we just shake it up to move forward. Next up: How's that swimming coming along? 

An artist who can't resist getting into the shot. 

Shameless.

Pink chairs in front of a hair salon. Cabled to the ground so the extravagantly 

coiffed don't make off with the furniture...

dynamic range, dogs and clouds. End of day socializing with dog owners. 

they tell you right up front what sells. In Austin at any rate.

Using the crop mode in the Q2 at the 75mm setting. 

Seems pretty good to me. 

I prefer just to upgrade....

the scene in front of a big bank building. I imagined that some 

failed corporate executive was whacked for not hitting his numbers

and they tossed him into the front flower bed as an example.

Just my film noir imagination....

Why do I think that "Maine Lobster" and Austin, Texas are a stupid mix of 

gustatory non sequiturs? What's the carbon foot print of sending lobsters

cross country when we could all be chowing down on tacos and guacamole instead?

75.

50.

28.

35.

75.

75.

50. 

You midwesterners know that you really want these boots. 

They would change your life. Just imagine wearing them into the office 

with your suit from The Men's Warehouse... And that funny necktie.

Streets wide open. Ready to park your car.

The alternate path back over the railroad tracks, through the fence and back to the waiting car.

Coffee cup "too-hot-to-hold" cardboard thing deconstructed as found art.

Happy Valentine's Day to all my lovely readers!!!

 

I took this image about 42 years ago down in San Antonio. I was walking around Commerce St. with an old Nikon film camera fitted with a 28mm f3.5 Nikkor lens. Shot on 100 ASA Kodak Ektachrome film. 

Yes, those are 40+ year old Converse All Stars. Still have them around here somewhere...

B. and I are celebrating our 44th Valentine's Day together. Cooking scrumptious stuff at home for dinner. Followed by lava cakes with fresh made whipped cream. Then headed to the couch to watch "Valentine's Day" (the movie) and drink pink Champagne. But not too much Champagne; one of us has swim practice in the morning.... And a portrait shoot. 

Hope you are having an equally good Valentine's Day. A nice day to chill out on.

We're in Austin. We're already slackers....

Strange cameras and equally strange lenses. No "deal-killers" here.

I left the house this morning with an odd camera and lens combination. I brought along the Leica CL and the TTArtisan 50mm f0.95 lens. It's a compact and comfortable combination. Easy to shoot and I almost trust the focus peaking in this camera. I put the camera's color setting on "standard" and  shot entirely in the DNG format. When I read comments about lens reviews of very fast aperture lenses there are always moaning Mikes who go on and on about the futility of shooting a fast lens at anything other than its widest aperture. "After all," they say, "You are paying all that money for the fast aperture, why else would you spend the money???" This is, of course, a very mindless reaction. The lens also has f16 on its engraved aperture ring but no one ever whines and kvetches about the need to shoot everything at that f-stop. 

I might get their argument (but probably not) if we were talking about a $10,000+ (USD) Leica Noctilux but in this case we're going to discuss the my little TTArtisan gem...their 50mm APS-C fast lens which you can buy most days of the week, brand new, for about $220. Both lenses are manual focusing. Both have fast maximum apertures. And that's pretty much where the similarities end. 

My objective this morning was not to go out on a search for images or to test this lens (once again) but to meet a VSL blog reader named Robert R., walk through downtown, have coffee and discuss life and photography. The camera addition was rote habit. Or a pledge from myself to myself never to leave the house without a camera. 

Robert and I agreed to meet at his downtown hotel at 10 a.m. so I drove into the downtown area and figured out a parking place that was a leisurely 45 minute walk away from the hotel. No sense passing up the opportunity for a nice walk on a cool bright morning. And a good excuse to bring along the camera and lens. 

We met up right at 10 and ambled over to the Cookbook Café where we grabbed coffee and a piece of coffee cake ( couldn't pass it up... ) and parked ourselves in the shade at a table outside. Our conversation was fun and lively. R.R. turned out to be interesting and well informed. I probably kept him out longer than he expected but when two photographers get on a roll it's tough to know when to stop. A couple hours later we were back in front of his hotel and I was amazed to find that time had rushed by. The mark of a fun meet up.

I walked back across downtown and stopped at Whole Foods's flagship store ( world H.Q. ) to pick up some small gifts, chocolate and tulips for Valentine's Day but on the way over I stopped now and then to shoot a frame or two. Nearly everything I shot was at either f1.4, f2.0 or f2.8. Nothing higher; nothing lower. This might be the first time I've used the lens as it was intended. Meaning on an actual, APS-C camera. My first forays had always been on a full frame Leica camera set to the 7:6 format to compensate for the trace vignette that shows up when this lens is used on a full frame 3:2 format camera. Each time I've used the lens I've been impressed by its neutral color profile and it's sharp, almost biting contrast at f4.0 and f5.6. I've also found it to be sharp even at max aperture in the center of the frames, regardless of format, but with the proviso that you hit the focus magnification buttons and focus the magnified image carefully when treading into the land of very narrow planes of sharp focus.

When I depended solely on the focus peaking in the CL, or in the larger cameras for that matter, I found variance between what the shimmering colored lines were telling me and where the point of critical focus really resided. So, the fault is with physics rather than with the lens... Use the right tools and the optical system will give you great results but you can't expect great results at f0.95 unless you are willing to put in the effort to make sure you've nailed the technical rigor required for accurate manual focusing. Centimeters count as you break the f-stop barrier between normal and exotic... Heck; get close enough and millimeters count.

The streets were quiet when we walked to the library. But on our return a healthy lunch crowd was out and about. Nothing compared to the swarms of people who worked downtown before Covid but a visible increase all the same. 

With all the wonderful full frame Leicas bouncing around one might wonder why I still keep a couple of CL cameras in the inventory. In their rawest form they aren't the best handling cameras but they still have the Leica digital DNA, the colors are great and the system contrast is ... crispy. If you "kit out" the camera with two additions you can transform the handling from "fussy" to exemplary. Set up right it's a great, smaller and lighter street shooting camera. Or travel camera. Or personal "art" camera.... etc. But you have to add a few attachments to optimize the package.

Here's my method.  Since the body is small, rounded and has no front or rear grip the most important first addition is a thumb grip. Leica sells one for ten thousand dollars (or somewhere in that ballpark) but the one I have is made by Match Technica and it is made for the CL out of heavy brass and then black painted. The thumb grip marketed under this name is about $145 but I ordered a Hoage branded thumb grip and the one I received for $45 was branded in very small type as a Match Technical.... I won't argue with them. It's a wonderful thumb grip. I bought one to test and a week later bought another for my back-up CL body. 

Hoage/Match Technical thumb grip. 

It's a great addition that vastly improves all day camera

handling and gives your thumb a place to rest. 

Once you have the rear grip figured out the next thing to do is to add a hand grip to the front so you can really grip the camera well and also shoot one-handed, if needed. I went back to the Hoage brand since I liked their other product so much. Adding the handgrip completes the camera. The addition of these two small, mechanical augmentations transforms the camera into the realm of near perfect.

My only complaint about the hand grip is that the leather texture of

the grip doesn't match the leather on the body. But if you are using the camera 

you obviously don't see this and if you are gripping the camera correctly no one

else can see it either. It's much more obvious in this close, bright image but

in real life?....Not so much. For less than $50 it's a great addition. 

If the texture on the grip bothers you and you "must" have a Leica branded grip 

you better move fast because the cameras have been discontinued and that means the 

inventory of Leica grips is not far behind. Get them now at the bargain price of 

nine thousand USD. A bargain... Or get the Hoage for about $50.

Here's the top view of the camera with both grips attached and ready to 

go out and make photographs. It looks pretty cool to me....

The gratuitous addition of a front view. Just for kicks. 

Big, fast glass on the front... Now it's a comfortable and 

practical street shooting pro tool. No deal killers here.

Now that I've written about the front grip I just reminded myself that I need 

to get a grip...for the Q2. 

Here are some photos I took with the CL and the TTArtian 50 fast lens.

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