It's Friday. The start of a calm weekend. A nice day for a walk.

It's been an odd week here in central Texas. The days have been sunny and warm and the night temperatures race back down into the 50s so we can all get a good night's sleep. It's almost Pavlovian but when the skies are blue and clean and the days are warm all manner of Austinites don on their shorts, running shoes and t-shirts and rush outside to amble around and soak up the heat. Indoor tables at restaurants are easy to come by but seating out on the patios is precious and hard to come by. We all know too well that in a month or so the heat will descend on us like an itchy blanket and we will only have weeks, maybe days, to enjoy the outdoors the way other people will be able to for months to come. 

Today it hit the middle 80°s. Next week we might crest the 90°s. Walks will be prioritized earlier and earlier and, as the sun heads further south and rises too early in the morning, we'll have to make a shopping trip to get fresh sunscreen and maybe some new hats. 

As nice as my office and my house can be I just couldn't stand the idea of sitting in front of a computer all day and not getting out into the perfect weather. For me, these days, it's much more about walking and just looking at stuff than it is about relentlessly photographing. Today I embraced imperfection. I put a lens on a Leica rangefinder camera for which there are no dedicated (or available) bright frame lines. Nor is there an in-camera lens profile. I was working without a parachute. But what's the worse that could happen? I'd throw away some digital frames. So what?

The camera was one of the black paint Leica M240s. The lens was my first M mount purchase of the digital age, the Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 Nokton Classic. The lens is tiny and sharp and, at 40mm, requires one to take a leap of faith when it comes to framing in the eyepiece of the M cameras. You can always cheat and use the live view feature to check composition on the rear screen but I chose to turn off the live view feature and just let it all hang out.  Too loose is better than too tight...

I did my loose framing using the 50mm frame lines and reminding myself that I'd have a bunch of extra room around all four sides of the frame lines that the camera was showing me. Since it was the walk that I craved (more than the pix) I was happy to just wing it where making photographs was concerned. I did shoot in .DNG so I could make up for most of the mistakes I might make but.... 

The most interesting thing I photographed; at least most interesting to me, was a series of clouds that had a repeating pattern and held together as a unit as it came across the sky. It looked to me like a snake's skeleton.  I made that cloud display part of my "walk project" today. And I made it a project by trying to find new angles for a familiar skyline of buildings with which to frame the clouds. 

I have been using the M cameras pretty much non-stop since October of 2023 and I think I've settled in well with the way they work. The way they render color. And the way I have to interpret their exposure eccentricities. I've gotten into the habit of assessing an exposure triangle that works for me and not changing a damn thing unless I step into open shade or go inside a building. The result is absolutely the most consistent exposures I've gotten in a long time. Far better consistency than any camera's matrix metering set-ups. This is something I think everyone who wants to shoot fast and get consistent results should try. It's basically a variant on using an incident light meter, ignoring the subject colors and tones, and settling in to getting your money's worth out of consistent daylight. 

I wrote once about a trip I did to Paris for two weeks, in 1991, to shoot for Agfa. They were launching new films and I was asked to be a tester. Mostly, for me, it meant free film and processing, and airfare to my choice of cities in Europe and then back home again. I used a Canon EOS-1 camera for a lot of the photography but I also took over my favorite, old Leica M3 camera and  50mm Summicron and 35mm Summicron lenses. As I'm sure you probably know, the M3 was a meter-less camera. The EOS-1 had all sorts of "new and improved" exposure tools and, admittedly, it did a decent job in most situations. 

But with the M3 I used a different method. I pulled the little data sheet that came in the film boxes of Kodak films back then and cut out the part that had recommendations for exposure settings when using the film outdoors, during the day. There were five different settings including settings for direct sun, sun with clouds ("cloudy bright"), settings for overcast and at least one recommended setting for open shade.  I taped the paper guide to the bottom of my camera, on the baseplate, using Scotch Tape. The tape covered the paper entirely which helped my guide sheet last a long time (no batteries required) and I referred to it often at first and then less often as the settings became second nature. 

The takeaway was that the exposure settings based on the camera base plate, paper guide gave me much, much more consistent exposures because there was no tricking the "meter" by pointing it at dark or light subjects. Almost like using an incident meter that meters the actual light falling on a subject instead of the (variable) light reflecting from the subject. Looked at the contact sheets today I can see that the M3 exposures were mostly right on the money and gave me great, printable negatives. The EOS-1's advanced metering was a firm second finisher when it came to exposure accuracy. Darn all those trendy people wearing black on black on black outfits....

So, now that I've ventured back into the Leica M camp I seem to be channeling my metering methodologies from thirty some years ago. And based on today's results --- it all seems to be working. 

I suggest everyone who is interested in shooting quickly in the streets try that old method. Figure out the main working exposures and make a little chart. Walk around and shoot with those settings for a couple days, a week, a month and see if your exposures aren't (for want of a better word) better. I'm betting they will be. All bets are off when you go indoors. Bars, restaurants and even shops are lit worse these days than they were in the old days. You might struggle a bit there...

Getting a great exposure was much more important, I think, in the film days than it is now. We have so many post production tools we can save ourselves with but wouldn't it be really nice to master daylight exposure? To be able to consistently nail stuff in the camera? It just takes a bit of practice. 

Speaking of practice, you'll get better and better at most things if you spend time frequently and routinely working at perfecting your understanding of photographic techniques --- and customizing the exposure techniques to match your subjective tastes. Light and airy or dark and moody. All are good but mastering exposure sure will get you into the ballpark that you prefer a lot quicker. 

Semi-retirement is going swimmingly. I seem to be settling into a series of fun routines. We've been to two new restaurants in the last week. We're meeting my brother and his wife at a new (to us) restaurant tomorrow afternoon. It's fun. After that we're off to a fundraiser for a senate candidate. Probably will turn out to be the most expensive couple glasses of wine I've ever had. The donation requested is about adequate to finance a new Voigtlander lens. But I guess I've got enough of those VM lenses already. And I sure would like a new senator... 

No. I'm not saying who.

I have seen this pine tree against this wall for years. I finally felt compelled to walk down the alley and make its portrait. It's weathered a lot in the past three years. Ice storms, dramatic high temperatures and also horticultural loneliness. I spent some time assuring it that I saw it...

It's all about the  clouds. A weird band of clouds that persisted for about half an hour. I thought it was quite cool. Loving f11 on a lens. Lots and lots of depth of field. Yum.