Warming up to the 28mm focal length by default. Lens pressed into service to compensate for user unpreparedness. Photographer now on probation at VSL...

 

Sixth Street was strangely quiet on this second afternoon of the SXSW event. 

Busy day. Morning swim practice. Coffee with two friends after. Home to help move furniture for Monday's big floor project. A break to eat Chinese food with spouse at a favorite, nearby restaurant. Back home to take a door off its hinges and remove it. Facilitating the repositioning of a large, sectional couch into one of the unused bedrooms. 

By four in the afternoon I was ready for a break. I grabbed one of the black Leica M240 cameras. I stuffed the 50mm f2.0 and also, as an afterthought, the 28mm lens into a very small Domke shoulder bag. The lens on the camera when I backed out of the driveway was the new-ish 75mm f1.9. In fact, it was my intention to use the 75mm exclusively and I would have done so if I had not (uncharacteristically) screwed up my preparation at every step. In fact, I'm amazed I made it back unscathed. 

I have diopters on two of the three M240 cameras but of course the one I grabbed to use this afternoon was the one without the diopter. First mistake. Thinking I was fully diopter-ized I left my eyeglasses in the car. Second mistake.  I walked about a mile before stopping to take my first photograph and realized the diopter imbroglio when I went to focus the rangefinder and the patch was too blurry to nail perfect focus. I didn't want to go back to the car because the weather was gorgeous and it was a perfect late afternoon to walk through SXSW with a camera in my hands. 

I dug into the camera bag and brought up the Ziess 28mm lens. I figured I'm pretty good at zone focusing and that the increased depth of field would save me from out of focus shots. It was actually an advantageous choice since I had just taken delivery on a 28mm accessory viewfinder that fit into the hotshoe of the camera. Easier to see the edges of the frame with the external finder than through the regular viewfinder. And I was anxious to test out the new finder...

Next up, I thought I had mastered all the menu items required to operate the camera effectively but I hadn't. I wanted to use the camera in manual exposure mode and I also wanted to take advantage of the auto ISO controls. I set the camera up the way I thought I'd get the best results and shot a couple of test frames. I was disappointed when every frame was two or three stops too dark.

Frustrated, I went back into the camera menus and looked for a solution. It's right there in the Auto-ISO sub-menu. The fourth line down reads: "AUTO ISO in M mode" = On (or off). I set the selection to "on" and instantly cured my exposure issue. I was elated. I'd never really noticed that control in the menu before but it strikes me as a pretty critical setting. I need to check that on the other two bodies!

I used the 28mm for the next two hours, randomly walking around downtown while the sun set and the bulk of SXSW attendees stood in endless lines to see lame stuff. Like a tiny amusement park with a small Ferris wheel that the company, Audible, set up in a parking lot on Congress Ave and Third. Imagine being an adult with a job, and forking over $1920 for a wristband to an eight day event in Austin, splashing out six or seven hundred bucks a night for a hotel room, etc. only to stand in a line for about thirty minutes waiting your turn to ride.... on a small, slow moving Ferris wheel. It boggles the independent mind. It really does. 

I came home and looked through the files and was delighted to find the image at the top of the blog. It seems very...forgive me...three dimensional. One of the super powers of the wider angle lenses that I seemed to have forgotten when I wrote in praise of longer lenses earlier in the day. Ah well. Live and learn. 

On my way home to have dinner with B. I stopped by Whole Foods and picked up a pecan pie. My favorite. I wish I could say it was Vegan or somehow healthy and medicinal but it's just a pie. A good pie but a pie. Maybe the joy of eating a big piece is somehow curative. Not sure what I thought needed curing....

Author with 28mm Zeiss Biogon ZM and TTArtisan 28mm viewfinder on a Leica M240 camera.