More like rural highway at dawn photography. From an old ad campaign from the 1990s.
4.28.2023
The lenses arrived. They are as cute as can be. Tiny and mechanically perfect. Here's my quick, first look at the Carl Zeiss 28mm f2.8 Biogon ZM.
I opened the box in the dining room, put the 28mm lens on the SL2 body, turned around and snapped my first photo of the day. Just a shot of my living room at the house. Not perfect but fun. For me.
What I quickly found was that when used on a digital camera like the SL2 the 28mm does have some vignetting. The lens is certainly sharp enough across the frame but there is a slight blue shift in the vignetted areas. A partial and mostly successful workaround for this is to go into the SL2 menu and find the M rangefinder lens profile that most closely matches this lens. For my taste it's the profile for the Leica 28mm Elmarit. The version just before the ASPH version. Applying this in camera to my Jpeg files (yeah. I was shooting medium sized Jpegs.. .. ..) went a long way to correcting the vignetting and the slight corner color shift.
Speaking of color, I found the rendering of the Zeiss 28mm to be cooler (more blue) than the rendering of the Leica lenses and Voigtlander lenses I have been using. Correcting the color back to where I like it also tames the apparent/inherent (almost like poetry...) contrast of the files a bit. All part of the learning curve when trying out new lenses for the first time.
The focusing ring is about as perfect, in terms of placement and feel, as I could ever want and I was so happy to get back to an aperture ring calibrated in thirds of a stop instead of the full stop settings of the two recently acquired Voigtlander lenses (40mm and 56mm). The lens came without a hood and while I didn't have any issues with flare I'm getting an aftermarket hood just to help keep my greasy fingers off the front element of the lens.
Below are samples from yesterday's walk. In a surprising break with tradition I did not stop for coffee. I'm finding that I have so perfected my selection of fresh coffees and my unerring brewing process that I have now spoiled myself for coffee done nearly anywhere else. Oh sure, I'll still go out for coffee but more for the social aspect of it than anything else. Sad when perfection in one field ruins your routine in another.. .. ....
Yeah. It's just construction but clicking in on the yellow cranes shows off the saturated color
palette that seems built into this lens.
A nod to the visitors who want relatively straight up lines in their images... ..
As seen on Sixth St.
A good test of sharpness and detail at f5.6. Yes. Very "usable"
In defense of the lens, the bottom corners were falling into shadow naturally.
The difference in color here is more down to the shadows being in shaded areas while the rest of
the scene "sees" reflected daylight. Pretty accurate --- from a physics point of view.
There is a sucker born every minute. And a group of con artists just waiting to fleece them.
Austin was host this week to a "conference" or cheerleading session about crypto currency.
The Great Tulip harvest of our century. Can't wait to fire up the diesel generators, log into the bank of servers and harvest me some BitCoin. While ruining the environment. Now, where have I put my "Ponzi Scheme" playbook? But the people seemed so earnest.
They even have their own shuttle bus. That's how you know they've arrived.
but can the lens do close-ups?
Sad. One of my favorite stops in downtown, the café/restaurant at the main library,
the "Cookbook Café" is now shut down. No idea if it will re-open or if something
else will take its place. But you know how much we fear change!
Next up we play with the 28mm's best friend, the Carl Zeiss 35mm f2.0 Biogon ZM.
And maybe we'll give them both a whirl on the front of a couple of Leica CL cameras
at Eeyore's Birthday Party tomorrow afternoon.
Might be the way to go photographing for fun without the big cameras.
Landscape crew did a nice job with the lawn. Not sure what kind of mowers they were using... .. .
4.27.2023
Waiting for the Fedex guy. And a reminder that Eeyore's Birthday Party is this Saturday.
Afradet.
I guess we're spoiled for speed. I ordered the two Zeiss lenses on Tuesday and here we are on Thursday with me drumming my fingers on the desk, reading about some guy cutting his grass, and waiting for the Fedex truck to rumble up to curb and then deliver my package to the wrong house.
To be fair though that only happens on about one out of five deliveries. But what bothers me is that Fedex always sends along these authoritative looking emails to let me know about the progress of my upcoming delivery. And those emails are always so, so optimistic when it comes to projected delivery times. Read the fine print on the email and you can see that they've given themselves until 8 pm this evening to effect delivery. But in bigger type on the same email they tease me with "estimated delivery times" which I've never seen actually pan out here in the real world. The latest email predicts that the package will arrive between 9:40 a.m. and 1:40 p.m. But I'm afraid, as usual, that this will turn out to be an administrative fantasy.
Since I bought two lenses and they have a certain dollar value the shipper elected to send them and require an actual signature to acknowledge receipt. Pretty much means someone has to be here until the package arrives.. .. .. and I would like for the package to arrive. Sadly though, B is back out of town, Ben no longer lives here, and we seem to have given all of the domestic help the year (or decade) off. When I ring the bell for the butler no one ever shows up!!! That means there's only me to sign for my package. Given the choice, and the fact that we live in an hysterically safe neighborhood, I'd be happy to decline having to sign for the package and would take the bet one way or the other about finally getting the box.
If past performance is any indication of future results I can safely predict that the delivery time will be late enough to rob me of the opportunity to go out for lunch, the chance to get by the Blanton Museum before closing, and will shipwreck me onto this island that I call 'home' for the duration of the day. Thank God the refrigerator is working and there's plenty of nice food in it. Thought I saw a big box of fresh, organic blackberries in there. Merits further investigation. .. ... .... And two Cosmic Crisp apples. WooHoo.
I'd be happy if the delivery person could just leave the box by the front door. That way I could be as irresponsible and foot loose as I'd like. I'm sure, if history is a guide, that the box would still be sitting there no matter how late my return.
But the enforced captivity has had its upside. I've been on a crusade to eliminate from my Smugmug.com account all of the files that are no longer pertinent to my work or which no longer give me joy upon seeing them again. As of 12:47 p.m. I have permanently deleted about 27,000 of the 450,000+ images that have resided there. It's a start and it's also a bit cathartic. I mean really, who needs the full inventory of all shot images for Dell headshots from 2003? Or 2004 for that matter? Or another folder of building shots from downtown?
And I don't know if this happens to you but I have a tendancy to put folders of current work in progress on my desktop and then forget to trash the folders or move them once I've completed the projects. I just dumped about 60 gigabytes of stuff that's already backed up elsewhere off the desktop and off the system hard drive. That's got to be better for the system performance if nothing else.
Hmmm. There should be a service that comes and waits at one's house just to accept deliveries or to meet maintenance people and refrigerator repair people so that not so busy but very spoiled people can "get on with their lives..." (See what it did just there? A correct amount of dots in my last ellispse... .. nope, lightining doesn't strike twice. .. . ).
I'd call the service, "We're waiting for You!" A nice little double entendre.
And in other news: we're slated to have rough weather here tomorrow and tomorrow evening but it's all supposed to clear out and give us all a sunny and cool day for Eeyore's Birthday Party. I'm trying to decide on my costume because I don't want to be one of those old guys who just lurks around on the outside of things grabbing surveillance style shots, with long zoom lenses, of beautiful young people. It's always better to be immersed in the social milieu in the moment. I think I'll go as a Viking this year. When I was in Iceland I saw a lot of fun sloganing around this: If you can be a Viking, be a Viking! Doesn't have much to do with Winnie the Pooh but what the hell?
4.26.2023
I reached into a time machine and grabbed an image of the downtown power plant as it looked about ten years ago.
Austin's old power plant before the downtown building boom.
No curved building in the background. No pesky skyscrapers.
No surrounding shopping center.
Two new (to me) lenses arriving at VSL this week. Stay tuned.
Interesting times for me. I added two Nikon mount, Voigtlander lenses to the equipment inventory this month and learned, in doing so, that I really like the process of manual focusing and that I really, really like some of the quirkier, older (pre-2010) lens designs and resulting optical characteristics that have been floating around for years.
I did something dumb yesterday. I had a moment between swim practice and lunch with B and I misspent the time looking around mindlessly on the web. I went to a popular website for a camera retailer in the San Francisco area and browsed through their "Recent Drop" offerings. It's a long, rambling listing, with product photos, of used gear that they've accepted on various trades. A lot of Leica, Nikon, and Sony stuff, and a good number of collectible items as well.
I was half way down the page of the first 100 listings when two or three lenses just listed caught my eyes. The most important of the them were both Carl Zeiss Biogon lenses for the Leica M mount cameras. After getting re-educated lately about 28mm lenses -- via the tutelage of the Q2 -- I was hankerin' for a manual focusing 28mm lens I could use on my L mount cameras (Leica SLs, Panasonic S5). I wanted a lens that is known to be sharp and contrasty (on all but the Sony cameras with their overly thick filter stacks) and best of all, small in size. A Carl Zeiss 28mm Biogon f2.8 ZM (M mount) in 9+ condition seemed like the way to go. I put it in my shopping cart. I've purchased from this store a number of times before and feel comfortable that they'll stand behind their sales (and product descriptions).
I was about to shut down my impromptu shopping and head into the house but lens adjacent to the 28mm on the page also caught my attention. It was the Carl Zeiss Biogon 35mm f2.0 ZM. And it too was in top condition. Might make a good pairing and both are reputed to share the overall look (color and contrast) of the Carl Zeiss 50mm f1.4 Planar which I also have. I couldn't resist temptation so I dumped the 35mm into the shopping cart as well. (Both are still available new as current products.. .. .. ).
I was about to complete the order online when I was inspired, no doubt by my recent negotiations with GE over the dastardly refrigerator, to go into an available chat on the website to see if I could negotiate even better pricing (although, in all fairness, the items were well priced already). Having spent two years in Turkey I learned to love haggling with vendors. ... ..
I asked about a discount for ordering both items at the same time, tossed in my "returning customer credentials" and got into a good natured discussion with a real person. But online. They took a couple hundred dollars off the initial pricing and tossed in free 2nd day shipping. I bit. We'll see if the lenses turn out to be as good as I thought they would be.. ...
Anybody out there have experience with either of these lenses? Chime in if you have the time.
The guys are here to cut the grass and do some landscaping. I can't stand the sound of mowers and leaf blowers so I'm heading to the gym for some strength training. Hopefully everything will look ship shape when I get back. Funny, I have plenty of lenses and would always like a few more but in 26 years living in this house I've never purchased a lawn mower or other motorized yard work equipment. A case of different priorities I guess.. .... . .....
4.25.2023
Much as I love to go see photography exhibits I usually only go to lectures by book authors. They are more interesting. Unless you can find lectures by photographers like Elliott Erwitt.
I have been in and out of the HRC (Humanities Research Center, also named, The Harry Ransom Center) many, many times. In days of yore I could arrange to take my photography classes from UT to the center to see some of the collected works in their great repository of famous photography. In the 1980s when I taught in the College of Fine Arts we could make reservations to have curators show our students actual, original works by Strand, Steiglitz, HCB, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and many others which are part of the Gernscheim Collection.
The class sizes I took over were small. Just my teaching assistant and six or eight students at a time. Curators would hand out white, cotton gloves and then we'd get a quick tutorial on how to handle paper prints without crimping them or otherwise marring them. Once educated we would pass around say, a Weston contact print of Peppers so students could see what great prints really looked like. Some prints only got handled by the museum's staff. But we could lean in and really study them in detail.
I remember one image that Henri Cartier-Bresson made of the Pope at the Vatican plaza surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of people. Just tightly packed in around the Holy Father. HCB had a high vantage point. The image was striking. Printed 16x20 inches (which is why student weren't allowed to handle it directly). But, as most of the students pointed out, HCB had missed focusing very precisely on the most important part of the subject. The Pope was rendered soft. Slightly out of focus. But what a powerful object lesson for aspiring photographic artists. Everything doesn't have to be perfect.
I was at the HRC for a lecture by Laura Wilson a month or two ago. And I was there last Thursday for a lecture about Norman Mailer and James Baldwin, given by writer, Darryl Pinckney.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darryl_Pinckney
The talk was thoughtful and interesting. Afterwards there was a reception with wines and finger foods. And I walked around the first floor of the HRC just looking. That's when I came across this image presented as a transparent film on one of the HRC windows. Part of a classic Dorothea Lange photograph from the FSA.
In another part of the gallery space was one of the very first photos.... ever.
Altogether it made me happy to live in a city that can be so stimulating for artists. Well, at least for the artists who show up.
Here is a video my friend Will and I did years ago about the loan of the Magnum Collection to the HRC by Michael Dell. Fun. And also in "monochrome."
https://vimeo.com/9830948 Will and I filmed this 13 years ago...
I went out for coffee after swim practice on Saturday. We tried a new coffee shop. We walked around the neighborhood and stumbled into some art produced by children. It was fun!!!
I like to keep up with friends. My friend Anne used to be one of my assistants back in the 1990s. She graduated into being a wedding photographer (not my fault!) and then she realized that a real job with a salary and benefits was preferable and she became a nurse. We check in with each other about once a month. Always over coffee. And our "coffee klatches" are mostly capped with a walk around whatever area we found our coffee in.
Since Anne and I have such a long history together (and probably since she is a nurse with a master's degree) her first questions always seem to be about my health. I gave her a good report on Saturday and we moved on to other subjects. Mostly about art, music, the declining quality of coffee out in the wild and the need to stay in motion as much as possible.
We did talk for a moment about film photography and she told me that she's never sold any of her film cameras. The Hasselblad she used for weddings, the Leicas she used for personal work and the Canons she also used for weddings are all still waiting patiently for her in a closet in her house. Well done, considering the resurgent popularity of top line film gear.
After having coffee at the very crowded packed Radio Coffee house and gardens we decided to ramble around a neighborhood, just adjacent, that neither of us was at all familiar with. In a few blocks we stumbled into a beautifully landscaped little collection of modest mid-century houses that had been transformed into a private, primary school called, "Habibi's Hutch." We had both heard of the school for years. They are known to be very "art forward" with their students and relatively without borders when it comes to each individual student's curriculum. And boy oh boy, it's apparent that art class is a top priority for many there.
I had a blast walking along the fence line making photographs of the student art hanging on the fence wires. The colors were vibrant and saturated with little help from me or my post processing. I was using the Leica SL2 camera and the Voigtlander 40mm. I seem to have a crush on that lens this week.
I can hardly wait to go back again and photograph more of the art work. I didn't want to truncate the walk on Saturday. But the universe is pretty good at rewarding folks who take the time to get out and walk through the world. Especially if they also bring along their cameras.
Be sure to click on the images and make them big. They are fun. Children's art always reminds me that not being too serious all the time makes being creative a lot easier!!! B thinks the secret of any creative success I've had is my immaturity. In fact, one of my coaches told me he thinks I have: M.D.D. = Maturity Deficit Disorder. This, he believes is why I like to swim fast, play around a bit at practice and smile more than I frown. Maybe he's right. Maybe more people should catch it. I wonder if immaturity is contagious? I hope so. There are way too many people walking around with a stick up their butts.... (four ellipses alert!!!)....
I was walking around Austin with a 40mm lens on my camera. I found these two images and thought they were funny. Unusual. One doesn't expect to find trenches in a building on Congress Ave. Just a block or two from the Capitol.
I guess it's a historic building so whoever owns it can't just tear it down on a whim. But it's pretty well place real estate so at a certain point an investor sometimes just punts. I can't imagine what the trenches are for but then I am not a structural engineer.
I can't say that this 40mm lens did a better or worse job than any other 40mm would have since it's not a collection of photographs that lend themselves to "showing off."
But, in my own mind, the real message from the universe to me on finding this yesterday was, "See? See how much changes from week to week? If you didn't visit you wouldn't see the changes."
I am starting to wonder just how many coats of paint were on these walls before construction/deconstruction started....
(I have officially decided that my trademark ellipses, which I use often and mostly incorrectly, will now have four dots instead of the usual three. It's my way of pushing back on the universe....just a little bit).
4.24.2023
Voigtlander's Interesting Selection of Nikon AIs mount lenses. Is it a good idea to buy a lens with an "antiquated" mount?
A sample from the Voightlander 58mm f1.4.
It was earlier this year that my friend, Paul, brought this particular line of Voigtlander lenses to my attention. While most photographers think of Voigtlander lenses being produced mostly for M mount camera I was surprised to see that the company had engineered four different lenses that come in a Nikon F mount. After borrowing a 58mm f1.4 from Paul I got really interested and started reading more and more.
Voigtlander lenses are produced by the same manufacturer in Japan which makes most of the current Zeiss branded lenses; and they have since the days of the Contax SLR cameras. I already own a Zeiss 50mm f1.4 lens which I like very much (lots of "character" wide open) so I was very open to seeing what the company was doing in that strange Nikon space.
Quick note: A photographer friend named David, who is actually more of a feature film director/producer, probably changes cameras even more often than I do. A month ago I ran into him at a party and he was carrying around one of the "Ghost" finished Leica Q2s. A while back he was the first photographer I knew who splashed out for the Leica S medium format camera and a handful of Leica medium format lenses. His camera turnover is prodigious. Don't worry! He can afford it.
Anyway, I was walking around taking photos in our downtown area on Friday and I saw him through a window, sitting in a café. I walked in to say, "hello." Next to him on the table was a nice and minty copy of a vintage, Nikon F4 film camera. I asked. He just came back from Tokyo where he picked up the pristinely preserved copy for about $120. Knowing he wouldn't keep it for long I made him promise, upon pain of social censure, not to sell it to anyone but me. It would be the perfect film vehicle for these Voigtlander lenses. And so it goes....
Back to the main topic: Voigtlander currently offers four different lenses in Nikon dress. These are a 90mm f2.8, the 58mm f1.4, the (delicious) 40mm f2.0 and a 28mm f2.8. I've learned that several of these lenses have existed as Nikon mount lenses for years but all have been recently updated to look very much like the pre-AI Nikkor lenses from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Big, husky, deeply scalloped focusing rings, very Nikon-ish aperture rings complete with the little "ears" to engage pre-AI camera meters and the usual Nikon lens mount, complete with electrical contacts with which to enable communication with more modern camera bodies. They are delightful to look at if you worked with Nikon's older cameras for any length of time. They are more stout than the M series lenses but if you are going to mount them to rugged Leica SL bodies or big Panasonic S1 bodies that doesn't rise to the level of off putting.
The beauty of buying lenses in this mount is that because of the long distance required from the lens to the sensor they can be mounted on just about any mirrorless camera on the market for which an adapter ring is available. They can be used on Nikon's newest Z cameras and when using a Nikon Z adapter they retain the ability to transfer data about aperture settings, max. aperture, etc. and to also enable a guided manual focusing. You can put them on Sony cameras. You can buy old Nikon film or DSLR cameras and use them with a certain nostalgic glee. I'm actually considering tracking down a Nikon Df just to use with these lenses, and a few other Nikon F mount lenses I've held on to. So, very, very much a chameleon family of lenses.
As I mentioned, I have the 58mm f1.4 and the 40mm f2.0. I can't justify buying the 90mm as I have and enjoy the 90mm Sigma lens but I am trying to consider whether or not to buy the 28mm. The lens designs are modern, dating back to around 2006-2007 for most. They are all very good and use modern optical components such as high refractive elements and some aspheric elements as well. They are not as clinically perfect as some even more modern lenses but I think that's fine for the kind of "found art" shooting I mostly do with them. They are certainly more than adequate and, being completely manual, they are more fun to shoot with. At least for me.
I would be most interested to hear from anyone who has and is shooting with the 28mm. And, if you'd like to share experiences about the other three lenses I am certain there are a number of readers here who would like to hear about them. Fire away in the comments.
Right now I'm going to put the 40mm on the front of an SL2 and spend some more time getting to know that lens. That's all for now.
Sorry it's taken me so long to get the comments moderated... Such a Herculean task!
4.23.2023
OT: Your focus determines your reality. Concentrate on the here and now. (philosophy stolen directly from Star Wars).
The world is constantly shifting, changing and mutating. And there are three aspects of psychology that drive anxiety or depression. Each seems to be made worse by the velocity of change. One is indecision, being unable to act. One is ambiguity, being unable to see effective differences between choices. Or even being able to see choices. And the final driver of feeling glum or distraught and nervous is loneliness. It is possible to develop solutions to all three. But you have to work on it.
I have a few favorite ways of dealing with modern life. For things like the dastardly (but now tamed) refrigerator or the downed branches from the ice storm, or a door ding on my car from a parking lot, I always try to stop and say: "Will this matter a year from now? A month from now? A week from now?" And will I even remember it? That helps.
If a thing (camera, car, window, light, etc.) is lost, stolen or damaged I get to swear out loud for ten seconds and then I remind myself that none of this will really affect the core parts of my life. None of this will put me in existential danger. None of this is irreplaceable. I grab a check book or a credit card and replace the important things but I also view loss as a new offering of choice from the universe, letting me gracefully bow out of owning too much. I don't have to replace everything that goes missing.
When it comes to making decisions I tend to research very quickly, confer with experts and then make quick decisions. I don't mull over important stuff for long. When my dad needed to go into memory care I asked his team of doctors for their recommendation for the best facility in town. When I saw a consensus I immediately moved forward. When a friend had center chest pains, too much fatigue and a tight jaw I didn't stop to debate it or research it or worry about whether someone's insurance would cover it. I called 911. He did have an M.I. He got seen within 30 minutes and enjoyed a good, fast recovery. Indecision in a situation like that is life threatening. But most of the time indecision is just a waste of time. When my dermatologist found a cancerous spot on my cheek we were heading toward Moh's surgery as fast as we could schedule it. Procrastination is more expensive, I think, than not making the absolute best decision.
But as my spouse might tell you, if I go out to look at new cars in the morning I'm generally driving home in my choice that afternoon.
I'lll never be as wealthy as friends of mine who worked early on at Dell. Or the one's who've clocked 20+ years at Apple. But it's folly to compare oneself with a tiny outlier cohort; especially if you already have more than you really need. I can be as happy driving an inexpensive car as I can be driving a Bentley or a Maserati ---- as long as there's something good playing on the sound system. After swim practice one day I was complaining to a well $$$ compensated friend about how hard it was to make good airline reservations to secondary market cities. He looked at me for a second, almost curiously, and asked, "You still fly commercial?" I reminded myself that I should consider myself fortunate just to be able to go wherever I want. Even if it means flying at the back of coach/economy. In photographic terms it means I'd be just as happy photographing with an old Nikon D700 as I am shooting with a Leica.
So, when it comes to photography I think it's a gift to be able to "see" a shot quickly. Intuit a good composition at speed and to be decisive enough to get what you want in that very moment. To take decisive action. It's the same when it comes to approaching strangers in the street to ask if they'll stand still for a portrait. You have to be decisive and once you've made your decision you need to immediately act upon it. March right in. Smile and sell your desire to portray the stranger and then get it done. Procrastination will rob you of your strength and courage. And opportunity.
Ambiguity is harder. You don't know what you don't know and you don't always have a path to figuring things out. But you can always control how you'll respond to ambiguity. You can ask for clarity. You can do your due diligence and research. You can get clarity from a mentor or an expert. But you can also decide that there is nothing that needs to be done in the moment and you can dismiss the need to have clarity and move on to solving something else more concrete. That gives you control too.
One thing that seems to trump situations of ambiguity is to have a firm set of rules you follow that are more or less about ethics and morality. Also, taking "feelings" out of an equation and looking at pure facts is so helpful. For example, you may love the house you bought with your spouse 25 years ago but you might do better now in a place that's closer to more friends and family. Not so isolated. But the nostalgia of place could be hampering your decision to move on. Separating the feelings from the facts of your situation is enormously helpful. Selling the old house might mean you can garner more financial security by putting the proceeds into savings, finding a smaller house or apartment closer to friends and family, and start harvesting the benefits of an improved social network. But the ambiguity or overlay of sentiment clouds the decision making and leads one to think of the situation as one with no right answers. Or nothing but bad choices when that's almost never the case.
Finally, the core of anxiety and depression is loneliness. It's interesting to think about as we age. B has been down in San Antonio for weeks at a time this Spring, taking care of her mom. A fall led to a bout in the hospital and some time in skilled nursing care. B is working with her siblings to help their mom safely manage living back in her home. It's the right thing to do for her mom. But it means I'm here by myself for the first time in my long adult life. I thought loneliness would be difficult to deal with. But it seems there is a network here of my friends which has instantly rallied with dinner invitations, coffee drinking dates, happy hours, long walks together and, of course swimming.
I missed a couple of days in a row of swim practice as I waited for someone to nurse my refrigerator back to health, and as I added more strength training (a lone pursuit). My mail box and my phone were jammed with messages demanding to know if I was alright. If I needed anything. If they could help. When I showed up for the next workout one of the coaches asked me where I'd been. Was everything alright? Was there anything he could help with?
This, the social network, is the antidote to encroaching loneliness and as I age I find that you actually have to make the effort to keep engaged. It's a reciprocal practice. And a good one to get into.
When I have the chores all done and my work for the day complete I find that it's also very, very restorative to take a camera and go out walking. Just about anywhere works. And just about any camera works. Being out in fresh air and moving your body is medicinal, especially for one's mental health. Smiling at strangers. Saying "hello." Marveling at so many things that have changed in the landscape from a week ago. And the delightful thing, at least for me, is that walking with a camera is non-competitive and costs nothing. Well, nothing but the occasional cup of coffee. Or a donation for that guy who plays the drums on Congress Avenue with his beautiful little dog named, Nana.
You can play life two ways. You can be grateful for everything you have, and appreciate all the people in your life or......you can be in constant despair. I know for sure which one is the most fun. For more on the second path go find a copy of the "Winnie The Pooh" and review the sections about Eeyore. Who really would like to be Eeyore when being Pooh seems so much more fun?
I can be sad that I can't lift 200 pounds over my head. But I'm happy I can lift 100 pounds for now. I may never get to 200 but I most likely don't need to. I will most likely not get that cover shot on Rolling Stone Magazine but I also most likely will always enjoy taking photographs, if only just for myself.
Vacations? I've been on one long, happy, relaxing, fun vacation almost every day since I graduated from UT. And maybe for years before then as well. Being happy in the moment and grateful in the moment is the real secret. And, for the most part, the best stuff is free. All it takes for me to smile and be happy is to see a warm look of love in B's eyes. Then, I am rich and fulfilled beyond compare.
Just a few thoughts on a Sunday morning. Damn....it's beautiful outside.
Now it seems like good marketing to broadcast that your truck is a hybrid.
But a decade or two from now this will be an oddity of the past as all trucks
will most likely be electric. Or maybe nuclear powered. Who knows?
I was looking at WotanCraft camera bags the other day. They look so
canvas-y and rugged. I wanted one but they don't have a USA dealer and
I'd have to order one online and deal with customs. But why would I when this bag above is so great?
finally. I've managed it. I kept both eyes open!!!
Introducing: My New Hat. Summer is rushing towards us...
I'm renaming my camera: The Long Dynamic Ranger.
Just go be happy and stop whining. Something my high school coach probably said.
More than once.
Just how well does the Leica Q2 perform in its macro mode? And just how good is its noise performance?
Evening at Will's house. His separate studio/office in the background.
Mark checking messages in the mid-ground. A glass recently emptied of
Champagne in the foreground.
When I purchased a Q2 I was not looking at it's close focusing performance and I was really less interested in how it handled noise at ISO 4000 and above than I was in how well it handled when operating it, and the overall quality of its files for general use. But after having used it for months now I find myself taking it everywhere. And using more of its other features...
I had the Q2 with me when I met novelist and essayist, Daniel Pinkney, on Friday evening at the Humanities Research Center at UT. I had it with me this morning when I went to buy fresh coffee beans at Trianon coffee, and it waited patiently for me in the car when I went to workout at the gym last evening. The camera is small and unobtrusive but can it perform? Short answer? Hell yeah. May be the perfect "dinner party" camera as well...
There are three things I didn't really explore in the first few months of its residence here. One is the macro mode. One is the ISO performance. And third is the camera's ability to focus well via the manual focusing mode. Which feels just like a well done SLR of old.
I want to write about the first two items here. Starting with macro. This camera makes shooting closer easy. You are still limited to the angle of view of the 28mm lens but with the simple twist of a ring closest to the camera's body you are able to extend focusing, complete with AF, a lot. The image just below shows the closest focus I can get on a bowl of peppers and fresh tomatoes. It's enough magnification to get in pretty tight. It's not a miracle setting and it's not going to give my Sigma 70mm Macro Art lens a run for its money but it gets you closer, cutting the full frame image in half. By which I mean it magnifies by about 50% more. It won't replace your dedicated macro rigs but it is very useful when you realize that you are working with a nearly 50 megapixel image which can be cropped without undo anxiety over image quality. And I mean cropped a great deal.
This is as close as I could get to the flowers with the macro engaged.
It's still a wide angle lens. You can see Mary's arm over in the right bottom
corner. But the detail crop below showed me just how sharp the lens can be right on
the actual focused plane.
The photos of the tomatoes just above and just below are both from the same frame. The bottom frame is a 100% crop of the photo. There are two things of note. This was taken after dark in a dim kitchen and required a high ISO (ISO 6400) and a steady camera. The resulting file was a bit noisy. I expected that. But I ran it through the A.I. DeNoise noise reduction (new feature) in Lightroom to get a fairly noise free photo. I cropped in below to show off the wonderful, fine detail on the leaves of the tomato plant. The ones that are in the plane of focus. Pretty amazing detail given the slow shutter speed, of the handheld camera, and the high ISO which generally robs detail. And kudos to the in lens image stabilization. It just works.
I don't know if it's really visible but on close examination, in the 100% mag. frame above, I see some chromatic and luminance noise in the black area between the front two tomatoes. But given the 6400 ISO setting I think it's an excellent performance. I'm happy with it.
Yesterday evening I posted a casual, black and white portrait of Will in a blog. I made the image into a monochrome. I thought you might want to see where I started from. What the color image looked like when it existed in LRC as a raw file. I am not AT ALL asking you to pick favorites. There are things about both that are good. I'm not looking for a critique or scoring. I think after 40+ years of shooting, printing and publishing I know what I'm looking for. I just wanted you to see "under the hood" so to speak.
Will in color.
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