I joined a gym. I have a personal trainer. She kicked my butt today.

 

Ice cream shop mannequin. Playing with wide open enthusiasm.

I started my day with a long walk to the bank. Some checks came in over the weekend and that always makes me happy. I could have deposited them via a phone app but I think any excuse for a good, long walk is a great excuse so I headed into the downtown area, parked my car a mile and a half from the bank and did the round trip. It's weird to actually go into a bank. I have one bank in San Antonio that I've done business with for nearly 40 years and have only physically been there once. It was when I had to deliver documents for an estate, in a hurry. I use an investment firm at which I have never met anyone -- in person. Amazing to me that we trust strangers to handle our important money when we'd never hire an assistant or doctor or lawyer without meeting them in person first. But I digress. I made it to the bank and then back home and the walk was pleasant. Even nicely cool.

I took a camera, shot some photos, looked at them when I got back to the office and then erased them. They weren't "bad" photos but they weren't interesting either. 

After doing mindless chores around the house and the office I changed into "workout" clothes and it was weird. With swimming it's the same wardrobe every day. Swim cap. Black Speedo Endurance Swim Jammers and a pair of Speedo goggles. On a cold day maybe a pair of Crocs on the feet to get back and forth on the freezing cold pool deck. But for time at the gym you need a whole different set of clothes. And shoes. And they have to be clean and not smelly. 

Loose t-shirt, athletic shorts (whatever the hell those are...) and a close-toed athletic shoes. Mine are Tevas. A protest against Nike? Naw, on sale at REI. And if you want to conform and be a pleasant gym member it's pretty much advised that you come not reeking of sweat and other noxious body odors. 

I joined the gym for two reasons. First, it's free because a gym membership is included in my health insurance policy. There's a convenient and well run gym less than a five minute (mid-afternoon, not rush hour) drive from the office. Makes it easy. The second reason is that my swim coaches and fellow swimmers keep proselytizing about the absolute need for older swimmers (over 50? over 40? Over 60? what?) to lift weights and do more weight bearing exercise to maintain muscle mass. To fight sarcopenia. And to swim faster.

I've been to the gym now three times. The first time I overdid the bicep curls and paid for it for days. But the facility offers a free hour of personal training so I decided today to take advantage of it. I met Renee, my personal trainer, at 2pm for an hour of fun torture. Renee is short, dark, ridiculously fit, and has a larger than life personality. But as nice as she seemed when we first met today she knows how to cajole, demand, request and coach more work out of a client than I ever imagined. Not that I'm complaining. Too much...

She took me on a painful tour of all the pertinent machines of torture on display there. I bench pressed and leg pressed and worked all manner of upper body muscles with a vengeance. We ended the hour with some much needed stretching. I enjoyed the pain, the expertise, and the external discipline so much that I'm contracting  with her to coach me once a week for the next few months; until I become my own strength/fitness expert....

We did all the major muscle groups and then concentrated on swim muscles. Tomorrow I will either feel faster in the pool or I'll be so sore I'll need Floaties (those inflatable floats little kids wear on their arms when first learning to swim...)  to survive the masters swim workout. But if it weight training  works......yow! Look out. 

So I am adding three days a week to my schedule for visiting the gym for an hour of grunting, lifting and machine handling. That's in addition to the five to six days of swimming and the three or four walking adventures each week. I may not have enough time to actually work on work. Does anyone know if you can get paid for just staying in shape? Maybe some sort of advertising ambassador-ship with Pfizer or Abbott? 

In photo news: The Voigtlander 58mm f1.4 lens was a fun experiment but it's heading back to its owner. Why? I tested it head to head against the Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 and decided that I liked the overall look, out of focus rendering, and even the handling better on the Zeiss. So why endlessly duplicate? My friend wasn't at all chagrined. He imagined I might chose the Zeiss. He's breathing a sigh of relief that the V58 lens will soon be back on the front of his Leica SL; where we both imagine it belongs. 

Still interested in testing a few more 50mm lenses but more interested in planning a shooting trip somewhere interesting. Just waiting for B.'s return. 

Now playing around again with the Leica CLs and the weird collection of lenses I have for them. Look for a lot of CL work to be done in a couple of weeks when Austin "welcomes" SXSW. Always fun and always like shooting fish in a barrel. All while riding the city buses into the town's center for a change ( the only way to get into and out of downtown without having to invest in massive amounts of time trying to find parking....). 

time to just put those cameras into Program mode and start shooting. Why overthink it?

It was a black and white day in downtown Austin.

It was a quiet day yesterday. I went to swim practice and then came back home to an empty house. B. is out of town tending to a family member in hospital. I've been left to fend for myself. After some basic house keeping I got bored and decided to go out for a walk with my camera. It was a gray day and one that I thought would be better imaged in a monochrome representation. 

I took my favorite camera, a crusty, stout Leica SL. I paired it with the new lens "flavor of the week", the Voitlander 58mm. I shoved an extra battery into my pocket and headed down to walk a familiar route. 

Nothing had changed. And as I walked on I felt a certain sense of futility with yet another walk through an all too familiar urban-scape. Another stroll through the most casually dressed city imaginable. Another unfulfilling experience dodging girls in denim skirts riding recklessly fast on electric scooters down the middle of the sidewalks, here to celebrate some bride's upcoming plunge into marriage. Wending my way around the same street people begging for money. Inflation strikes even there. Used to be the active homeless would ask for "spare change" now they are demanding $5 for lunch. For some it seems like a full time, all seasons job. 

I was shooting with a lens burdened by no particular detractions or attractions other than its nod toward nostalgia and the comfort of the familiar. I'm sure every one else has been there. There is now a loneliness in walking around with a camera photographing random stuff. I spent hours in what is one of Texas's top tourist locations and not a single other person carried an actual camera. Sure, people occasionally stopped to photograph something with an iPhone but I was more or less the crazy uncle hobbyist that time and culture have passed by. Even the folks snapping away with their phones seemed less passionate about the endeavor yesterday. Almost as though we've all concluded that with the endless torrent of images being constantly shared everywhere that no individual shot or selection of shots matters anymore. Another drop in the ocean. Another futile attempt to carve out some sort of alternate viewpoint. A different visual perspective of a declining culture. Hello "The Americans" except that now everyone with a camera is a Robert Frank. 

It's almost as if we've become mini cover bands for famous rock groups sitting in dour suburban garages doing our paeans to the classics and the classical originators. Endlessly covering "Hey Jude" or "Tangled Up in Blue" but without the talent, or the advantage of being the first mover. The first person to see in a certain way. Now, seventy years after Robert Frank, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ansel Adams and so many other pioneers we keep paying homage by trying to fit our tiny feet into the deep tracks they laid into the mud of our visual culture, so long ago. And doing so mostly unsuccessfully but in enormous quantity. 

After a forgettable dinner I entertained myself by watching a movie from Disney's new take on endless "Star Wars." But all the subsidiary shows in that franchise now mash together and endlessly repeat the theme of the redeemed gunslinger working through his past and paying penance with violence ostensibly to help the universe ... in some way or another. So boring. So predictable. From spear throwing Tuscan raiders to warp drive spaceships, all concurrent.

Many, many years ago I loved movies. I was mystified when a much older mentor of mine told me he could no longer stomach movies because, after decades of enduring them, he realized that there were only a handful of plots and those plots were coupled with a financial need for movie producers to pander to the tastes and comprehension abilities of the general population. Watching yet another in an endless series of predictable dramas or comedies was, for him, unbearable. After a while they all seemed the same.

And circling back to photography that might be exactly what I'm experiencing in the moment. The Been There, Done That, Seen That a Thousand Times realization. Now we love endless gray tones. But like all styles that one is ephemeral. Tomorrow we'll see someone's work pushing out high contrast images (Allan Schaller?) and we'll worship that for a few weeks before we slide off into some reveries about highly saturated colors which will give way to subdued pastels. And it's the same for subject matter. We'll always seem to have bandwidth for young, thin-ish, half naked female portraits or suggestive glamor-posing but all the rest of the subject matter just rotates over time through the greatest hits of the genres. Stark monochrome mountain-scapes which give way to close captured shots of random people on the streets which give way to overly constructed landscapes in subtle colors which give way to garish, direct in your face studio portraits. 

And then the vanishing hordes of old duffers like me wandering around with wonderful gear in a vain attempt to re-capture the magic we felt when taking photographs in our youth. Someone should write this as a play, or a soap opera for TV. Toss in a salacious murder, some twisted love affairs and.....Oh! What's that you say? It's already been done? Ah well. 

All I can manage to say for the photographic process now is that it gets one out of the house, moving one's feet, and feeling a small measure of solace to be around other humans who share a common appreciation of coffee; especially when savored in the midst of people marking time, looking at their phones or answering messages on their laptops. All packed together in coffee shops but all so isolated and alone.

And then, this morning, I discover that the new-ish refrigerator isn't cooling the refrigerator half properly. I'd better use up the milk before it spoils. 

How was the lens? and how was the camera?, you ask. Just fine. They worked just fine. But without a spark behind the process all the trappings of the craft are mostly rendered meaningless and banal. Proven by hundreds of millions of random images tossed into the ether every day. And the slightly stinging realization that I'm in no way special or removed from the wave of hollow content producers who accompany me, shoulder to shoulder. Hell bent on somehow feeling relevant. 

B. will be home in a few days. The refrigerator will be fixed under warranty. The laundry will get done. Already the photographers I have known personally are passing away and drifting away from common memory. One foot forward all is darkness. The future is unknowable. The future of photography is predictable. And bleak. But it's still a good excuse to get out of the house and walk the walk. At some point the walks will remain and the camera will become something we leave at home. Picking it up only when something tickles our memory reminding us about the way we used to consume the art we used to love. And the process we admired.

On my walk yesterday I ran into a gallery owner I've known for 40+ years. He only shows photography and represents people like Keith Carter and Jack Spencer. He's 78 years old and still working full time at the gallery. I used to see him walking through town with a Leica rangefinder over his shoulder. Now he just walks through town. We reminisced about the "good old days" when everyone was breathless about a new generation of print-making photographers. And corporations were decorating tall towers with gorgeous prints. Anybody want to buy an NFT? 

Well, that's a day. Here's my take:

 

A few extras from yesterday's ramble through UT Austin and beyond...Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f1.4 SL II

 

Yet another 50-ish millimeter lens. The Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f1.4 SL II. Nicer than most of the reviews would have you believe...

I'm sure you know by now that I find 50mm lenses, and lenses in the ballpark of 45-65mm to be the natural companion to my way of seeing things; photographically.  And I'm sure you can see in my writing that I am curious to try as many different 50mm-ish lenses as I can, natively and via adapters, on my L mount cameras. A couple of weeks ago I got a Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZF.2 lens in a Nikon mount and adapted it to my cameras to play around with. Unlike modern "super" 50's it has what some like to call "character" or "personality." When people say this they mean that certain flaws are inherent in the lens and that they like the way those flaws affect the overall image. 

Typically, fast 50mm lenses designed before the age of "super" lenses (circa 2008-2010 and later) have certain "issues" that are endemic to the basic optical design. One such "issue" is that most fast 50's of a certain design (fewer elements and fewer optical groups) tend to exhibit fairly pronounced vignetting when used at their two or three biggest apertures. The lenses are also sharper in the middle than on the edges until they are stopped down from f1.4 to something like f4.0 or f5.6. The final "flaw" in the mix is the tendency of the previous generation of lenses to have more field curvature which is part of the reason why they must be stopped down to bring the edges and corners to a satisfactory level of sharpness across the frame...

But while these classic 50mm lenses have common compromises they also have their own unique optical characteristics (guilty of calling a fault "character") and that's what makes them so interesting. So collectible. I've owned lenses such as the Sigma 50mm f1.4 Art lens and I've played around recently with a Leica 50mm f2.0 SL APO Summicron; both of which are highly corrected. Same with the Panasonic 50mm f1.4 S-Pro lens which I owned way back in 2021. They are wonderful lenses from an objective point of view but to my mind they are too good. Too clinical, and because of their giant size and freakish weight they have lost a huge measure of handling comfort and easy agility which makes them a daunting choice for a "walk around" and "have fun" lens.

Knowing that I have these prejudices about modern versus previous generation lens design, and knowing how much I enjoy a good, eccentric 50-60mm fast lens, my friend Paul couldn't help himself and brought along a small package when we last met for coffee. Wrapped in a black, cloth pouch was a wonderful lens that I had never tried before and have always been curious about. "Try this one. You might like it..." He said. 

Inside the pouch was an essentially brand new copy of the Nikon mount Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f1.4 SL II. The exterior design mimics almost perfectly the design of Nikon manual focus lenses from the 1960s and early 1970s. Complete with a large knurled metal focusing ring. A well implemented aperture ring near the rear of the lens and even the little "rabbit ears" that allowed Nikon lenses to be backwardly compatible, as far as metering is concerned, with cameras made previous to AI and Ais Nikon cameras. 

The Nokton 58mm is not currently made in either a Leica M or SL mount so the Nikon F mount model becomes the easiest way to get this lens on a Leica SL or CL camera. You just need to add an inexpensive Nikon F to L mount adapter to the mix. These are "dumb" adapters that only mount the lens to the camera but don't transfer aperture information or enable any sort of auto-focus. I use them all the time and while I'm sure someone out there has tested some adapter for some camera and lens combination which ended up being "not perfect" my success rate with almost every adapter has been good. 

If you use this lens directly on a Nikon DSLR, like a D850, it does have electronic contacts (and CPU) to transfer information from the lens to the camera and will give you full exposure automation but still no AF. 

The lens "features" a classic, double Gauss optical design and a paltry seven glass elements in six groups. The parent company, Cosina, is that same entity that makes the currently Carl Zeiss branded lenses for several different lens mounts as well. If the Zeiss Milvus 50mm f1.4 ZF and the 100mm Milvus Makro lenses are any indication those folks really know how to do lens making well. 

You can pick up this lens, brand new, for around $550. There is nothing miraculous or earth-shattering about this lens. It's well built and may have some small design tweaks to the optical formula which makes it "better" but, in essence, it's a standard fast fifty. You can expect good center sharpness even wide open but at f1.4 if you are shooting flat test charts you can expect a mess of unsharpness in the corners and at the edges. Remember, there is some uncorrected lens curvature (part of the optical formula compromise) so the corners aren't exactly in the same focal plane as the very center. Stopping down helps. A lot. I got great images at f2.0 as long as I was defining "great" as being very sharp in the center third of the frame but willing to accept moderately soft corners. By f4.0 and especially f5.6 the lens performs really well. Nicely sharp and with excellent contrast almost everywhere in the frame. 

None of this is to suggest that you can't or shouldn't shoot the lens at f1.4. It gathers light well there. And if you put your subject near the center you can get great images. But never assume that a fast fifty, used wide open, is a great flat field macro lens. It's not. And it's not designed to be.

I used the lens a bunch yesterday and photographed lots of different subject matter. The lens has similar optical characteristics as the Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 ZF.2 but has a different color palette and a different degree of contrast and sharpness at f1.4 and f2.0. I would describe it as having higher performance than the Zeiss at those two fastest apertures; at least in the center of the frame. 

Comparing either of the lenses to current AF lenses is interesting. The build quality of both seems much better than the AF competitors which trade fast AF focusing for rugged overall build quality and joyful usability. A lens like the Lumix 50mm f1.8 (AF) certainly resolves more detail in the corners and at the edges when used at and close to wide open but it is a bit clinical and much less fun to use. The lenses built as manual focus lenses are much more engaging to use because they require your participation in a different and more immersive way. 

This lens or the Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 are very much fun to use and more than good enough for just about any sort of art-impelled photography you might for which you might use them. That lenses still exist that are this well made and this much fun to use makes me happy. I might even learn to use the 58mm as a newer, wider portrait lens. Change is good. 

I've posted a bunch of samples below. They are sized to 3200 pixels on the long side and I encourage you to click on them and view them large if you really want to see how the lens handles detail and sharpness. If you are just glancing at them on a phone then the words will outshine the photos for information. But then.....phone? How passé....

vignetting added in post. And here I thought "print was dead..." 

these guys were working on big infrastructure projects across the street from the Blanton Museum. 

They flagged me down and asked me to photograph them. How fun! (f4.0)

Young family soaking up art at the Blanton Museum yesterday.

The small child was more interested in watching the amazing 

technique of the professional photograph as amateur..... f1.4

You know a major university has gobs and gobs of extra cash when they can afford to 

plant thousands and thousands of beautiful tulips ..... just because....

I was at the Blanton Museum with the Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f1.4 lens

yesterday. They have a new show called, "Work" and it's all about the regular day 

jobs that some artists had to do in order to survive financially as they worked on

their art. Fun stuff from Andy Warhol, Barbara Krueger and Vivian Maier. And many others. 

There was a sign at the entry to the exhibit informing guests that the in-house photographer (see just above) would be making photographs in the main gallery and that by entering you agree that the museum can use your image. I guess that's fair since Thursday is free admission day. Fun to watch.

And then there are the classics. Good, solid models with which to test your

lens at its widest settings. From the Battle Sculpture Collection. Also at the 

Blanton Museum. 

Circling back. Would I buy this lens? Sure. It's beautifully made. The focus ring is exotically good. The images are solid and fun. Why the heck not?