Today is starting out well. For the first time in weeks we have no heat alerts or heat warnings. It'll be hot today but not much hotter than it normally is this time of year. I celebrated by going out for a "traditional" walk. And I took along a Leica CL. Stripped of all accessories.

How glorious to have a day on which you don't start sweating before 10 a.m. How wonderful to have the air temperature match the "feels like" temperature. And how wonderful to leave all the heavy and "perfect" cameras at home and reacquaint myself with the tiny and uncluttered Leica CL and an equally tiny and uncluttered Carl Zeiss 35mm f2.0 ZM lens. 

It's fun to park the car in the shade and wonder around aimlessly but at the same time respectful of the usual loop through downtown. I set my camera to make Jpegs and at first I set it to make black and white images. But I am able to change my mind so when I encountered stuff that might look better in color I shot that instead. Or in addition to. 

The focus peaking in the CL works crazy well and from time to time, when my anxious brain would fight for supremacy, I'd punch in and magnify a frame, worried I would not have sharp focus otherwise. The focus peaking verified or unverified by magnification never failed me. Nor did the light meter.

I walked from one side of downtown to the other and shot well over a hundred frames. I knew I wouldn't keep them all but sometimes it's nice just to see what stuff will look like when it's been photographed. And how familiar things will look if one changes between cameras, or camera formats, and takes them again. 

In some ways it felt as though this morning was a bit of time off in order to save up some energy. Energy I'll need when I take the big Fuji MF camera and the even bigger TTArtisan 90mm f1.25 lens out for a spin. I hope to do some of that this weekend. 

I used to think it was a waste of time to walk without a plan and to take images without the benefit of a formal framework or project to guide me. Then I read something about one of my all time favorite photographers, Josef Koudelka. Magnum photographer, David Hurn hosted Koudelka at his house for an extended visit. During his time there Koudelka would load and shoot a minimum of three 36 shot rolls of film each day even if he was just puttering around the house. He told Hurn that he needed the daily practice and the daily routine in order to be ready. Ready to capture some fleeting image at some future time. Like katas or swim practice or barre exercises. Staying in tune. 

Add to that the much reported benefits of being outdoors and the even greater benefits of walking and you've got some compelling reasons to embrace an un-agenda'd day to the fullest. 

Proud of being able to so well rationalize the frittering away of another nice morning with another nice camera in hand I rewarded myself by stopping at Mañana Coffee for a cup and a decent croissant. It was pleasant enough to take the coffee and pastry outside under the shop's expansive awnings. A nice way to spend a morning without getting anything substantive done. Be sure to try it. Often.

some of the images below captioned. some not.

I have no idea what this object does. None at all. I've begun to think it might be an alien relic. 

Set in the middle of the city to monitor us. But it probably has something to do 

with railroads since it's right next to the train tracks. 

I  have seen this bus in the parking lot of the Amtrak Train Station here in Austin for the 

last few weeks. People are currently living in the bus. There are signs of life. 

An unusual dwelling for our city. But interesting.

This is very unusual. It's a shot of the four lanes of Lamar Blvd. A street that is usually 

full of cars. But I stood on a bridge looking down for several minutes watching no traffic.

Just looking at the strips of asphalt running north and south.

This is what a dozen coats of silver paint look like when photographing a metal

utility box in black and white.

the path from the railroad tracks back into civilization and .... coffee. 

I was happy to see the lens resolving dried grass so well. f5.6 is our friend.

four bad styles of architecture in a row. How droll. 

Blue.

Blue, red, yellow and teal.

"I look at taco shacks from both sides now...." (see below).

Only NSFW in red states.

It's really not an aquarium. It's a bar. On Sixth St. One tiny fish tank does not

an aquarium make. Fish Tank Hyperbole. 

this is a mobile Starbucks trailer. I'd never seen one before. 

I guess they drag it around to places where people line up to buy tickets to 

see live music performances. Not sure if that's a feature or a detraction. 

I'm so, so over the Pike Place blend....

My interpretation of the 1950's overlayed on 2023.

This photograph which I've taken is easily as exciting as anything Stephen Shore has 

ever shot. No. It's more exciting....

Now, by switching angles we overlay the 1960s on 2023.

From my future exhibition. "Lounging by the Colorado River." 

It has always been my desire to live in a surveillance culture. 

The federal courthouse building does it with vigor.

the unfettered happiness of good diagonals. And barbed wire.

I shot this originally as a black and white image. It was boring as hell. It's still a bit boring if you don't particularly like urban architecture but at least you can rest your eyes on stuff that's blue. That's the most popular color for paintings across all cultures. We, as humans. like to look at blue.

I'm trying to trademark blue as my own. I thought of this after Elon grabbed for the letter X. I think Blue is more valuable. It will be the name of my "everything" app. 
 

I was photographing in black and white this morning but my brain told me that it was okay to make some photographs in color. I was okay with that.

 

I have what seems these days to be a peculiar thought process. If I set out to make black and white photographs with a camera that is capable of making color photographs my brain seems to decide that some images are fine in black and white but it reserves the right to decide that other scenes would be better captured in color. 

So in spite of my best intentions my brain insinuates, manipulates and ultimately demands that I see some scenes in color and other scenes as black and white and further insists that I make reasonable decisions about which scenes will look best with or without color. Since I don't want to piss off my brain; it is one of my favorite organs, I follow along and rationalize my capitulation as "mental flexibility." An un-hardening of the gray matter.

I know I should be more stern with my brain. After all, if want to be a black and white photographer I should have the freedom to shoot everything in a mush of gray; if that's what the scene itself dictates.  But my brain keeps butting in and saying things like: "Hey, you actually like this particular scene because you are drawn to the vivid and contrasting colors. Don't be a meat head. Switch to your "standard" or "vivid" profile! It's okay."

At other times my brain and I will both look at a scene and surprisingly find ourselves in harmony and agreement. In those cases my brain will say: "Hey, I get it. It's all about the contrast and the content. Color wouldn't really add anything --- and most photographers think contrasty black and white is more.....creative. Go for it!" And I do. I go for it.

The problem is, if I hold a fully functional camera in my hands and have every intention of taking black and white images, I know that the camera can still take color images and that forces me to surrender to something scary: Logic. The logic of using the camera's potential to the fullest and admitting that some scenes are better rendered in color while others are better rendered in B&W (or "monochrome") and that my camera and I have the power to identify which are which and make the most of our engagement with the subject. Working together.

I have to grudgingly admit that though my first attempt to photograph my coffee and croissant at Mañana Coffee this morning was in B&w my brain was correct. The image does work better in color.

Lesson learned.

Two Assignments Completed with the new (to me) Fujifilm GFX50S-2. I have coffee with a blog reader. And a new lens gets delivered. Lordy.

 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.

Clarifying my position on old film cameras versus modern digital cameras...

 

Former assistant, Renae. Photographed on black and white film

with a medium format camera. 

Can I pinpoint when I thought film was the most incredible medium in the art world? Sure, it was the decade from 1990 to 1999. Black and white film emulsions were outrageously good compared to absolutely everything that had come before. And 120mm black and white roll film was so, so, so much easier than using hand-coated, glass plate 11x14 inch "film." 

That decade, the 1990s, was also, in my opinion the highpoint of printing paper manufacturing as well. 

But that is all in the context of comparing what we could do with film and paper during that decade with everything that had been used in the past. 

There were ten years following the turn of this century in which, at least black and white image making floundered and was much less successful. At least for me. 

With the mass acceptance of digital cameras of all manner the sale of film, and processing chemicals and printing papers plunged. Flat-lined. Got insanely niche. Got truly expensive. If you were a working photographer you probably needed to trade in that closet full of Nikons or Canons and Hasselblads or Mamiya 6x7s to try to afford a single professional digital camera. And once you made the trade you probably spent years tearing your hair out trying to get back to a black and white image that was even one tenth as good as you could have made in the days of darkroom magic. 

In relay running parlance it was all a bungled hand off. The "baton" got dropped over and over again. 

We tried fitting ink jet printers with gray, and other gray, and black inks to get a non-color contaminated paper print. But mostly we just spent like hedge fund managers on ink to feed the ever clogging heads of our printers. The results? Not so much. Clumsy. Flawed. Frustrating. And funny enough, hard to replicate from print to print.

Somewhere near the end of that first decade of the new century a lot of people who didn't need economies of scale and lots of daily/weekly throughput; not to mention that they weren't depending on their income from photography, just flat gave up. Tired of profiling and finding the right color spaces and explaining away burned out highlights and banded, noisy shadows, they retreated back to film cameras. Or what was left of them.

They learned where to have their film scanned. They scrimped and saved to afford $25 rolls of film. But in the end, for their uses, most amateur film shooters were much better off financially (as far as their hobby goes) than those techno-geeks of us who kept ever updating digital gear and hoping and praying that it would finally work just as we always imagined it would. And just as the camera makers kept promising it would...

The film fanfare happened. People believed in it. And for many it's a fun way to do photography. Still is.

But from about 2013 onward digital got better --- and then much better. And if you did a lot of photography the economics of it were and are now decidedly in favor of shooting digital. No argument that if you have the time, the budget and the patience you can get absolutely great stuff from medium format film and a traditional darkroom. In some ways, at least when it comes to rendering human skin, it's very different from digital and to many people it still looks better. But if you have lots of assignments, shoot lots of frames and need to turn jobs around quickly digital beats it hands down.

And if you've been experimenting with black and white digital for a long time we're now at the point where you can make great images. And routinely.

But having spent 25 years in darkrooms and making prints why don't I feel like rushing back to film now that I have the time and resources to do so?

Mostly because, if we are honest with each other, shooting, processing and printing film is a major pain in the butt. And if you skip a lot of the processes and just have your film developed and scanned you are most likely missing out on exactly the qualities that made so film good in the first place. You are basically, with a digital scan from film, getting less quality and less performance than you would from any of the current, high end, digital cameras. 

Last time I looked I had nearly a million frames shot for the business. The number of frames per job dramatically increased over the years, on a per job basis. Both from my own laziness and/or curiosity (to see what might come on the next frame) I shot a quantity of images that would have cost an enormous amount of money had they been on film. It would never have been sustainable with film. Not to mention that I would have routinely run out of time for.....everything else in life.

And, for the most part, I've gotten to the point where I'm happier with the images I'm making on current cameras than I did on film. At least technically. 

A lot of our desire to shoot film is nostalgia. We were young and beautiful. Our models were young and beautiful. And the feelings from that period of time get inextricably tied up in our memory with the cameras and films we were using at the time. We remember how beautiful our partners were and how much energy and amazement we had when things actually worked out that any associated part seems to rise in our memory as having been very important. That's probably why we adore our early prints. We're looking "through" them to the subjects. It's not the prints themselves, as objects, that deliver the value. It's that they are triggers for the memories they represent.

And, as humans, I think we value the struggle more than the results. At least I do. So our nostalgia and pride for the things we had to learn and practice to be even moderately successful in the time of film cause us to feel a sense of emptiness with digital mostly because it has become so easy to do the same level of photography.

That's not the fault of the cameras or the technology but our inability to change our presumptions that all good results take hard work. Or that the hard work itself is a feature. Or that we're getting graded on how much effort we put into something. 

I won't go back to shooting film. It takes too much time. Of course it's fine for people in their 20s. They have no real understanding yet of just how fast time rushes by. How precious it seems later in life. 

And, finally, there is the reality that photographic fashions and styles have changed. I know how to shoot as I did back in the 1990s and could replicate the technical processes but I no longer feel an allegiance to an older practice. I like trying new things. I feel that if I get locked into a practice for the sake of just continuing the same vision and point of view over and over again then I've become stuck. Not growing. Not learning. 

I would never have appreciated the current work of Daido Moriyama if I had not worked through the old work to new work. I'd still be stuck back in time, worshipping photographic work from decades past and unable to understand and value current work by current artists. 

It is sad for me to see photographers of my age locked into the work of the 1950s-1990s as though all the value of those photographs got codified and made permanent in that time frame. All that work has already been done. It's time to do new work. We see the past clearly. That's why it's comfortable. But the future? "One step forward all is darkness." We fear what we don't know. But, as I've said before, "The cave we fear is the treasure we value the most." 

So, no more film for me. And no more worship of large format, black and white landscapes, hollow art images presaged on early tech. Banal shots of empty baseball fields and bad color portraits of equally boring subjects. And all the other stuff that keeps us stuck in amber --- certain that our past was the zenith of photographic culture. 

I need to make a place for my work in the future I'll be living in just a few seconds from now. I already know what happened yesterday.

Changing gears for a day. After the studio shoots I'm cycling back to a smaller, handier camera for a spell. Blame Robert Frank.

too many gadgets? The hand grip, the thumb grip....

Here's the "stripped down" version:

Less comfortable. But less bulky.

The purist's configuration.

Have you ever clicked on to a documentary about a favorite photographer and, when the show finished you were ready to adapt his style for your own work? I've always enjoyed the work of Robert Frank. I think his photography is direct and fearless. So I was happy when someone sent me a link to a documentary with and about Robert Frank, on Amazon Prime video. It's called "Don't Blink." 

The video was done in 2015 and Frank was, at the time, in his late 80s or early 90s. He was still quite sharp, irascible and opinionated. In part of the video he was walking around on the Coney Island beach and reminiscing about a series of photographs he'd taken there 50 years earlier. He had photographed strangers on a beach packed with people and his photographic efforts went on all day and into the night. 

In this scene he talks about using a small and discreet camera and moving quickly. Shooting quickly. As he's talking about this the video camera pans to a young, current-day photographer walking around on the beach with a big DSLR, big zoom lens, big camera bag hanging off the shoulder/back. Sticking out like a huge, sore thumb. And Frank remarks that to get the images he wanted when he shot there he had to be less obvious. Less plodding. Less stiff. He had to move fast and carried only one small camera and lens.

Through the video the only time a camera is in the frame it's a small screw mount Leica camera with an equally small 35mm or 50mm lens on the front. That's it. No zooms. No light meter.  No telephotos and (obviously) no special mirror gadgets involved.

Watching the video triggered for me a memory from an earlier time in my non-linear progression as a photographer. I was working as a copywriter for an ad agency and my passion was photography. At the time I was using an ancient Leica IIIf screw mount camera. A camera model that dates back to the early 1950s. A time before the M series Leicas were introduced. 

I was always working on a budget so I rolled my own film with a bulk loader. Always Tri-X. And when using those earlier Leicas you had to trim the leader of the film in a certain way if you wanted the film to load and advance properly. Scissors were a necessary accessory. Always. Probably the sole reason I first bought a Swiss Army Knife. Always having scissors in my pocket. 

One week I took a break from work. It must have been in 1979. I was at my parent's house in San Antonio and itching to go somewhere out of the country, to have an adventure and take photographs. This was long before I was married. Long before I had any sort of responsibilities. No constraints on my time.

I packed a few pieces of clothing in a small backpack, dropped all of my gear (one Leica IIIf, one 50mm f3.5 collapsible Elmar lens, my Swiss Army Knife and twelve rolls of hand rolled film + a passport) into a small shoulder bag. A repurposed, non-photographer bag. And asked my older brother if he'd drop me off at the San Antonio airport. This was a time in which one could arrive at the airport, look around at the various destinations on offer right now and be on an airplane heading somewhere within a half hour. Security check? Didn't exist.

The destination that looked best (and cost least) was Mexico City. I paid $36 for a plane ticket and headed out. I arrived at the airport in Mexico with no hotel reservations and no real plan but I'd read about a hotel on the Zocalo (main square) and it seemed interesting so that's where I headed. I spent a week going to markets, the park, the pyramids outside of the city, the Zone Rosa, the Anthropology Museum and even the National Pawnshop. I had a wild breakfast one day at Sanborn's House of Tiles and walked without fear or trepidation through the downtown  a couple of nights at two or three in the morning. 

My constant companion was the tiny Leica rangefinder camera. So many good memories even if the photos I took were less than spectacular (no light meter, still learning to print, still learning my way around composition). It was the process, the time spent, the adventure that made the trip an important one for me.

What an interesting time. No cellphones. No internet. No credit card. No schedule and no fear. Just one very small, very rudimentary camera and  the desire to make photographs. To see things. Heaven.

So this morning when I woke up I was still thinking about Robert Frank, photographic adventures, small cameras, discreet photography and thinking....even if "discreet" isn't the pressing issue, how much fun it was to travel so unencumbered. So light. So quick and so free.

I had a camera in mind today that I thought I'll circle back to. It's the small, handy, Leica CL. The digital one. That and the smallest modern lens I could find. The little Carl Zeiss 28mm. It's like a 42mm (short normal) on a 35mm camera. The camera is also just about the size of the old IIIf...

I set the camera to shoot black and white. I'm enthralled with it. But mostly as a symbol for adventures. So much history calling out to photographers....

And here I am getting ready to shoot a portrait in the studio with a big MF camera. Odd times.

Would there be a market for a camera like the ancient Leica IIIf I shot with? No frills. No automation. No huge size. No high value. Just a lens, a shutter and a sensor. Not even a light meter? I'd buy one. But then I'm eccentric enough to part with the cash...  You?

 

Out of practice. Like running a race you haven't been training for....

For visual pleasure only. No connection to the written content below...

I got a couple emails from a large radiology practice I've worked for often during the last 20 years. The emails came in last week. The requests were for two portrait sessions. Two doctors are joining the practice. The practice currently has about 150 doctors/partners and I believe that I have made portraits of every single one of them. Now we'll add two more.

As I opened my calendar to schedule the new doctors' appointments I realized that the last time I accepted an real, commercial assignment to make photographs was on June 15th. Back then I photographed five people for a public relations agency. Coincidentally, they sent me their selects to retouch as I was typing this blog post.

So it's been a month and change since I've done a job for a client. Sure, I've been keeping in practice operating cameras and, with a little help from my swim friends, I've been keeping my personal portrait "muscle memory" up to date. But I'd almost forgotten all the small details I have to put together to produce even the simplest of productions. 

Both of my portrait sessions for the radiology practice are booked for tomorrow. One at 11:00 a.m. and one at 5:45 p.m. It's nice to be able to schedule both on one day as I'll only need to set up the background and lighting once. 

I have a list from my adult supervision department. They (B.) indicate that it would be nice to have everything on the list done before the first person arrives in the morning. That list includes: cleaning the bathroom (including cleaning the Saltillo tile floors), stocking water bottles in the fridge to offer on client arrival, sweeping the walkway to the studio door, vacuuming the studio, maybe cleaning the studio windows, picking up all the extraneous gear littering the studio floor and otherwise making the compound look welcoming and.....aesthetically....satisfactory. 

In addition I have a self-generated list of items that includes: Setting up the portrait lighting I designed for this client a while back. I donated all my AC powered strobes to a newly launched photographer earlier in the year and am just using three Godox AD200 Pro flashes for all my flash work. 

Two of them go into the Godox mounting bracket that conjoins two bare bulb flashtubes and provides bright modeling lights. These, as one unit, will go into a 50 inch Octabank/softbox. I have already charged their batteries and tested them with an appropriate trigger. The additional AD200 Pro will be used with a round head and a dome diffuser to illuminate the background --- which will later be dropped out in post production.

I've now set up and tested all three lights. They work. Hooray.

Since I'm thinking of the Fuji MF camera as a personal/art camera for now I was hesitant to use it for these paying jobs but I thought, "oh, what the hell?" and decided to give the new camera a go. I set it up and finagled all of the settings required to work in a studio electronic flash environment. I also set up the camera to shoot Super Fine Jpeg + Raw so I can shoot the portraits in a square format and crop down to final, vertical images. The Jpegs will show the 1:1 crop but the Raws are there as a safety net in case I really screw something up and need the assistance of reliable and forgiving raws. 

One benefit of a square file mentality is not having the need to turn the camera sideways to get the usual vertical portrait shot. So much easier to work with a horizontally configured camera and just to crop as needed.

The other big set of tasks is just the straightening up of the studio and the putting away of all the toys that I've taken out over the last few weeks to play with.

I guess the biggest thing is actually accepting the idea that I have to knuckle down and actually be here at an appointed time. Or, rather, two appointed times. Other than swim practice I haven't had "time certain" commitments for weeks on end. I pretty much get to do whatever I want to do whenever I want to do it. 

Two studio portrait in one days feels like baby steps. Baby steps away from the edge of being fully retired. Which I've already decided would be too boring to actually consider. 

But I'm still happy I turned down the 14 shooting days in Houston the first two weeks of August for a London agency. That seemed a bit too hot and intense a re-entry to enjoy.

Swimming. The one thing I have been diligent about this year has been swimming, and the related strength training I've added mostly in service of improving my swimming. 

The water was cool enough this morning to swim more distance sets. The core of our workout today was a set that consisted of some middle distances --- reps of 200 yard swims. 

I call it "middle distance" but world class competitors now see 200 yard swim races as sprints. 

We did 400 yards of swimming and 400 yards of pulling, along with 200 yards of kicking, as our warm-up this morning. The fun, overarching set was:

4 x 200 yard swims on a 2:45 interval. The intention of the coach was that we "descend" each 200. Starting at a moderate pace and swimming each successive 200 faster until the 4th one was more or less a 95% effort sprint. 

Followed by a six minute continuous recovery swim.

Then 4 x 150 yards swims on a faster pace; still descending all four.

A recovery swim.

Then 4 x100 yard swims on 1:30 with each one being a faster sprint than the one before it.

We wrapped up with a moderate 400 yard cool down swim. 

There are two things I can feel improving in my stroke because of the strength training at the gym. One is that I am swimming while holding my core (ab muscles) tighter. Same with my gluteus muscles. This is an aid to maintaining a streamlined body position in the water. And as we all know better streamlines are "free speed." 

The second thing is that I've really been studying Katie Ledecky's distance freestyle stroke and trying to adapt a longer reach and a better turn over cadence while swimming freestyle. Katie just tied Michael Phelps for the most International Gold Medal swims (20) so she's the perfect role model for anyone trying to improve their freestyle swim performance. In the 1500 meter race held yesterday in Japan she beat her closest competitor by 17 seconds!!!!!! Amazing. All Hail Katie Ledecky. 

The biggest take away I've found so far is to start my catch way up at the front of my stroke instead of just leaning into the middle of the stroke for power. Try it. You'll find more power throughout each arm stroke. And it's the strength training that's providing the extra power at the front end of the stroke. I can actually feel that.

I'm trying to stay on the topic of photography here but swimming is just so captivating. Check out the World Swim Championships races on YouTube if you get a chance. Do a search for "Leon Marchand breaks Michael Phelp's record in the 400 I.M." It will make you a swim believer. Far more exciting than any "team" sports/games. Infinitely more exciting than watching bowling, golf or snooker... And over much quicker as well.

back to work on the studio prep. Hope your day is more fun.

 

Cross format compatibility. Will a Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f1.4 SLIIs Nikon mount lens cover the full frame of the medium format Fuji 50Sii? Let's walk around during the heat of the day and find out...

 

Walking around the West Campus area and walking around on the University of Texas at Austin campus.

 At least on campus there is ample shade....

When I got the Fujifilm 50Sii from my friend it came complete with a Tech-Art Nikon F to GFX lens adapter. Just so happens that I have two Voigtlander lenses in Nikon mounts; the 58mm f1.4 Nokton and the 40mm f2.0 Ultron. Both are very, very good lenses when used for their "native" format = 35mm. I wondered if either of the lenses would project a big enough image circle to actually cover the full width and height of the 33mm by 44mm sensor in the MF camera. 

Today I decided to find out. Well, I decided to find out how the 58mm performed. I'll try the 40mm next time.

Here's the TB:DR (too bored, didn't read) version: The lens has a very small but very severe bit of vignetting in all four corners. I'd be more concerned if the vignetting occurred in just one corner...or two. Stopping down makes the vignetting smaller in size but denser in its core. Focusing close reduces the size of the vignette. 

At wider apertures the corners and about 5% of the edges of the frame are soft. Stopping down to f5.6 the whole frame (except for the far corners) gets nice and sharp. I think it's a laudable performance since we're using the lens here far outside its design parameters. For portrait work it would be fine. Hate the vignetting? A slight crop into the frame will fix that right up. 

The focus peaking in the Fuji 50Sii works really well. The lens focuses really well. I am now considering adding the 90mm f2.8 Voigtlander lens in a Nikon mount to round out the mix. Nothing certain yet. Hesitating because I know myself and if I end up liking and keeping the Fuji I'll probably go out at some point and buy the vaunted 110mm f2.0. But with my luck I'll decide to make the purchase the day after it goes off sale. If I push "buy" today it's $2200. If I wait it will be four or five hundred dollars more. Another first world dilemma to worry about...

Still f-ing hot here. Not getting better. Cabin fever sinking in every day after lunch....

Take a gander through the images. From what I can see both the camera and the lens are worth having. Keep in mind that my intention is to use the Voigtlander 40 and 58  (and other 35mm format lenses) with the camera set to the square format. In that configuration there is no vignetting and no noticeable softness in the corners.  Yay!