Today I was delighted to reacquaint myself with a miraculous 32 megapixel, square format camera. One that shoots really nice "monochromes" I spent an hour making square photographs before lunch.

 

A small portfolio of square, black and white images for a cold and wet Friday the 13th.

Three photos done with a Leica SL2 set to 1:1 format.

Color profile set to Monochrome HC (high contrast).

Lens: the cheap and wonderful Panasonic 50mm f1.8 S. 

Don't like squares? Go home!

 

I used to be a "seat-of-the-pants" photographer until I read about pre-visualization on a famous blogger's site. Now I spend hours, even days, meticulously planning for the end result.

 

Before reading (yet again) about pre-visualization I might have walked by this point in space and casually turned, clicked the camera shutter and then walked on by. But now armed with the knowledge that all the really, really good, super smart photographers rigorously pre-visualize every square millimeter of every image they take I have changed my slothful ways and adopted a wholly new practice. 

I woke up one morning, soon after diving into an exhaustive article about the process of pre-visualization and in my mind I had a vision of what this scene should look like if I applied the needed rigor to my once cavalier approach to enjoying the taking of photographs. I had missed the part in my photo education which clearly states that obsession with minutia and a desperate need to control the nearly uncontrollable flow of the universe is almost mandatory if your work is to be taken seriously. 

To that end I started by establishing the GPS coordinates for the scene I had seen in my dreams. Once that was entered into my notebook I drove over to look at the location and the assemblage of safety railings, roadways and retaining walls. This scouting was broken up over the course of three different days, each taking several hours, during which I took many scouting shots and took notes about the angles that I thought most closely replicated the dream state image. Once I'd made a thorough mapping of the space via numerous overlapping images I went back to the studio to begin laying out the material on a large board and brought out a graphing calculator so I could compute the perfect location in the X/Y coordinates. Back to the scene I went with a measuring tape, a laser rangefinder and a can of yellow spray paint. 

After careful measurements to ensure that my camera position would, indeed, give me the exact distance from the railings and at the exact exo-center of my overall composition I over-sprayed paint around my shoes and the tripod legs to make an exacting marker for future forays into this magic of pre-ordained imaging. 

The next thing I needed to do was to determine the exact required height for the nodal position of the taking lens on the camera. I could calculate that from the oil paintings I executed by memoried reference from my dreams of the scene. One of the great powers granted by pre-visualization. Persistence of potential reality...

But in doing the calculations for distance to the railing, accurate left to right positioning for the tripod and camera, and exacting calculations for the camera's nodal height and the angle of attack for the lens I realized that I hadn't carefully experimented with the best focal length to re-enact my original vision. 

I came back to the location again with a full rasher of lenses; from 16mm to 500mm and tried each one of them to see which would give me the exact appearance and perspective which I deemed would be vital for the success of the image. It was a close call with lenses from focal lengths of 45mms to about 60mms. I wasn't sure because there were no exact fits so I went back to home base and ordered a number of lenses in the limited range. I thought about zoom lenses but I wasn't sure I could get a zoom lens with the right final aperture. How sad it would have been to carefully and thoroughly pre-visiualize the image only to be laid low by the wrong aperture setting. 

Another round of trial and error with a small (ten) sampling of wide normal, near normal, normal, slightly longer normal and, an outlier, a 58mm focal length showed me that I was narrowing down the field of appropriate candidates. And don't get me started on the weeks and weeks of shooting test charts to determine just how much character and of what kind the final lens choice would need to deliver...

I finally had all the pieces together and went to the site to make initial photographs, fully understanding that an accurately, well and accurately pre-visualized end result might require many more return trips as I compensated for time of day and time of season. And meteorological conditions. I returned to the  site over and over again. In the steaming heat of the Summer, during days of driving rain, days of sleet, and even one day of an ice storm which paralyzed the rest of the city, but on no single occasion did all of the parts come together for me. I quit my job to be more available to the changing conditions that would lead to the perfect result. Then I realized that I might never be able time the shot so that a random car was in the right spot on the right day, at the right time. So I hired a car and a driver and had them on call for weeks at a time. 

Today was the day. The weather was gray and damp. There was a perfect mist in the air. I called the driver and had him rush to a rally point a block away from the location on the roadway that was mandated by the pre-visualization. I set up the tripod, the camera, the lens and the point of focus that was the result of weeks of mathematical calculations based on Bamburger's Construct of Alternate Conscious Displacement which predicates that exacting locations have a singularity that calls to the artist. I waited for traffic to dissipate after the lunch rush and counted on several friends at the top of the route in question to radio me with minute-by-minute traffic analyses. At the critical moment I called the driver and he set out onto the course in a carefully rehearsed automotive choreography. 

As I watched the car approach I readied myself for the exact moment of clarity and resolution. 

I clicked one perfect frame on two vetted memory cards and held my breath for a moment as I reviewed the file. Then it was off to the studio to go through the pre-visualized processing steps that would bring the vision I had so clearly in my mind, now months earlier, into reality. So, one perfect photo can equal months and months of incredible work, trial and error, the loss of any contact with social reality and so on. But it's all worth it because I'll finally be able to write, with a straight face, that this is the result that I wanted all along. That I had, in fact, pre-visualized it.

And here I thought some photographers were just good at making up this crap, after having mindlessly grabbed a shot, in order to make it seem as though their image was imbued with some greater value or that they had a more cogent idea of how to "make" photographs than everyone else. 

Yes, of course, it's all bullshit. As is most of the stuff one reads about pre-visualization outside the studio. I guess some people need to continually justify their indecision about when and why to click a shutter. But previsualization is akin to trying to plan to fall in love with a complete stranger who is mostly out of your league.

Don't fall for it. And if you believe in the power of previsualization there's probably no help for you. You are in a cult...

A different day, a different camera. And different weather as well.

this is the only image in this post that was not made with a Sigma fp camera and

a Voigtlander 40mm lens. it was done with a Leica M240 and a 35mm VM lens.

It was 80° yesterday afternoon but only 50° today..... 

I was on the fence last month. I thought I'd accumulated too many cameras. Thought it was time to slash into the inventory and reduce the camera-fat a bit. I looked around the studio and my eyes settled on the Sigma fp camera. It's a small box. It takes L mount lenses. It's tiny for a full frame camera. It doesn't come with an EVF but you can buy one for it. It's slow to focus. Slow to start up. And has square corners. Definitely not from the "Jelly Bean" school of industrial design...

But damn. It sure is better than the sum of its parts. I wouldn't recommend it if you want to use a bevy of manual focus lenses and you are too cheap to buy the EVF. You will struggle in bright sunlight. But speaking from nearly four years of experience and well over 10K images from it I can say that the dynamic range, the color from the "flat" uncompressed raw file and many other things about the quality of the files will endear the camera to all except those who have desecrated their copy by dicking around with the sensor. 

As I wrote, I was on the fence about getting rid of the camera. Selling it. But I hate to part with a camera if I can look back and see a nice little pile of photographs that were made by it and which I can see values that I can't easily recreate with another camera. So, if I'm considering an exit I like to take the camera for a spin just to make sure. 

I thought that a sunny day would be a "worst case scenario" for a rear-screen-only camera like the fp so I compounded the degree of difficulty by adding a manual focusing, adapted M lens with no electronic communication whatsoever. My lens of choice was a Voigtlander 40mm f1.4 Nokton Classic. A fun lens and a good focal length for general shooting out in the streets. 

I made use of the punch-in magnification (center button on the four way pad on the back of the camera) and also focus peaking. I more or less stayed in the f5.6-f8.0 region so depth of field was, in this case, my friend. As a final nod to the idea of torture testing I took off all the grips and even the neck strap and used a small Domke bag as a drop bag.  I'd carry the camera around, shoot stuff that interested me and then drop the camera into the bag.

The results? I love this little camera although I will probably use it mostly with a system, AF lens when I'm not shooting under controlled lighting in the studio. It just makes more sense since I whiffed on a couple closer portrait shots when it came to accurate focus. It's a small, light and discrete package with no accoutrements and no wind-flapping neck strap. Perfect for looking like "a tourist in my own town." 

The sensor in the camera is fabulous and I love being able to shoot with all color profiles and emulations  turned off. Just a nice, flat, information rich file that's ready for tweaking in post. 

See the images below on a large monitor and make your own assessments. If you do decide you need to get a Sigma fp immediately then don't scrimp on batteries. If you are out for a day of continuous shooting with an accompanying "chimping" you'll need three or four fresh batteries to make it all the way to the end. 

Here's the visual stuff. I shoot stuff before I write about it. Seems only fair....

Look! we have foliage that turns colors!! Just like in the great northern wastelands!!!

Judging by the "sale" rack at a 2nd St. shop denim cut-offs are no longer in style.

Trying to imagine the correct venue at which to wear a bright red, leather dress...

Not so sure I'll ever solve that puzzle.

A virant pink paint job on a groovy Porsche.

Merry Christmas. Hmmmmm.

loving that sassy looking tree. 

reflections on the concrete walls of a parking garage.

More reflections. Looking like aliens with sunglasses, or knee joints. 

tree shadows on concrete. 

Camera operator grappling with focus. Dirty baby-diaper camera hold. 

New technique = set camera at 1/500th of a second. Set aperture at f5.6-f8.0.

Set Auto-ISO from 100 to 26500. Mode setting= M. 

focus and then blaze away with abandon.